Asprela Central Park

The Parque Central da Asprela is a unique landscaped area in Porto, designed to serve as the connecting hub for the entire Asprela university campus and the city’s new “green lung,” benefiting thousands of students and workers at the University of Porto. It covers approximately 56,855 square metres, featuring wetland zones associated with streams and dry zones with clearings and woodlands, organised to create a network of accessible pedestrian and cycling paths, along with leisure areas, viewpoints, and microclimate-friendly spaces to mitigate heat peaks.

This project, approved in 2016 and developed by a multidisciplinary team from the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Porto, includes strategies to address climate change, urban population growth, soil impermeability reduction, and biodiversity loss, promoting the integration of natural solutions into the urban environment. The intervention enhances existing resources by restoring floodplains and stream banks, combining naturalistic designs with geometric and eclectic areas, as well as incorporating sophisticated sensory planting zones.