Parque Origen: Rediscovering the lost gardens

Connatural presents Parque Origen: Reconnecting with lost gardens, a Medellín project that restores the city’s relationship with water and creates a landscape in transition. It was recognized at the 2025 Holcim Foundation Awards for Latin America. 

Parque Origen: Reconnecting with Lost Gardens seeks to recover a notion of hydrological landscape associated with geography through a pilot project for the ecological, cultural, and material regeneration of urban micro-watersheds.

Planta General/ Master plan
Ilustración / Illustration: Connatural

The accelerated growth of Medellín’s urban areas has sealed the soil, altering natural runoff patterns and compromising riparian ecosystems. In response to this contemporary challenge, a building at Universidad EAFIT, constructed in 1962 on the floodplain of La Volcana Creek—one of the city’s 4,261 bodies of water—was dismantled as part of Medellín’s 2020–2030 Renaturalization Plan.

Desmonte del edificio preexistente/ Dismantling of the pre-existing building
Fotografía/Photography: Connatural

Jardines prehistóricos/ Prehistoric gardens
Ilustración / Illustration: Connatural

The project shapes a new landscape through the reuse and transformation of 80% of the material from the pre-existing building. The reconfiguration of these materials into successive terraces makes it possible to channel and slow the flow of water, contributing both to stormwater management and flood mitigation, as well as to restoring soil permeability, while creating suitable conditions for the growth of riparian vegetation.

Jardín contenido por preexistencia/ Garden Contained by Preexistence
Fotografía/Photography: Connatural

The hydrological processes implemented bring the intervention closer to a landscape in continuous transformation, where the seasonal fluctuations of water directly influence patterns of vegetation growth, promoting a dynamic conception of nature and landscape architecture.

Esquema de proceso de transformación/ Process transformation diagram
Ilustración/ Illustration: Connatural

Fotografía área del proyecto/ Aerial photograph of the project
Fotografía/Photography: Connatural

Parque Origen reconstructs a culture connected to water by transforming a disused building into a living laboratory for climate adaptation, where technical and experiential knowledge converge, integrating the initiatives of diverse institutional, community, and academic stakeholders. The project’s terraces and spaces become living classrooms that facilitate the community’s reconnection with the territory’s hydrological geography.

Parque Origen reconstructs a culture connected to water by transforming a disused building into a living laboratory for climate adaptation.

Inauguración del proyecto/ Project inauguration
Fotografía/Photography: Connatural

As a pilot project, its controlled scale in both spatial and temporal terms facilitate the testing and refinement of ecological regeneration strategies. This approach integrates environmental, educational, social, and material objectives and strategies, establishing a replicable model for future ecosystem regeneration initiatives in the micro-watersheds of the Aburrá Valley.

El jardín de noche/ The night garden
Fotografía/Photography: Connatural

Origen is an ecological and poetic infrastructure grounded in the recognition of history, questioning the boundaries between ruin and life, and between nature and culture. By embracing waste as an active material, it proposes a landscape in transition, where design, memory, and sustainability converge in the construction of more just and regenerative futures.

Company profile:

Connatural, a landscape architecture studio in Medellín led by Edgar Mazo, creates sustainable projects between people and nature, contributing through local actions to the preservation of ecosystems and communities.