Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Arnos Vale
Decommissioned in 2017, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ E.T. Joshua Airport remains an unmistakable presence on the landscape. From above, the 1,400-metre-long waterfront runway appears to cut into the tiny green island like a sharp surgical scar. The temptation would be to remove every trace. Yet while the Arnos Vale Resilient City Masterplan imagines a radically different future, it artfully avoids erasure. Instead, it translates the linear signature into the spine — and central park — of a graceful urban setting.
That setting is the reimagined leftover husk of a monofunctional site spanning just over 60 hectares. In adapting it into a bustling mixeduse milieu, a consortium of firms including Stoss Landscape Urbanism, SOM and Charles Waldheim Architecture integrate a variety of residential, commercial, institutional and recreational buildings with ample and inspiring greenery. Much of the built fabric will be new, including the hospital that will anchor the commercial end of the development to the northeast, and some of it, including the Arnos Vale Stadium on the opposite side, already exists. All of it will be served by active transportation infrastructure — including a planned LRT connection to Kingstown.
These city-building ambitions are deftly paired with an emphasis on climate resilience. The proposal introduces a layered, ocean-facing waterfront boardwalk that combines flood mitigation with public realm. During a storm surge, the lower tiers are engineered to be submerged in order to protect the upper boardwalks (and the wider Arnos Vale community) from the rising water; restoring some of the island’s biodiversity, native mangroves are strategically reintegrated into this same coastal landscape as another barrier against flooding. The wealth of greenery and waterabsorbing plantings also mitigates the urban heat island effect and creates shaded public spaces. A new “urban canal,” meanwhile, performs a similar function deeper into the landscape. It’s part of the plan’s river remediation project — which shows just how profoundly the designers have considered every aspect of this place. The result is a radically reimagined coastal site and a paradigm for the future.
Team: Chris Reed, Joonyon Kim, Amy Whitesides, Davi Schoen and Mateo Yang with Pam Setpakdee, Hala Nasr, Sonny Xu and Fei Lu (Stoss Landscape Urbanism); Charles Waldheim Architecture; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; HR&A Advisors; Weston & Sampson; Benarva Browne
The Arnos Vale Resilient City Masterplan imagines a radically different future, while artfully avoiding erasure.
