The Descents is an interactive infrastructure that restores an abandoned pond for public use. It works as an environmental mediator: making the links between the pond and water visible, it connects us with the site, the territory, its memory and its resources.

Composed by four temporary micro-interventions, it communicates the water levels of the dams that provide water to that area of Madrid in real time. It also enables the visitor to sense the water levels of the river through their own skin as though bathing in the water that once circulated there, and to walk through the cracks where water has been filtering over the last decade. Through this trans-media environment, the infrastructure immerses the visitor in multiple landscapes of data, pollution and archaeology.

But it does not only reports on environmental conditions, it also responds to them. It responds to the climate, to the seasons and to the hours of the day. The intensity of its experience depends on the water volume of dams and rivers, turning off when there is draught. Therefore, the use of the pond depends on the needs of the environment (and not the other way around). Each micro-intervention is also a maintenance and repair strategy. Through water, light and paint it lightens and humidifies it, facilitates its access and it provides a new image.

The Descents is an invitation to reflect on the politics of environmental entities, as a resource and as a habitat for other species, often very polluted. Through an immersive and playful experience of data, it aims to contribute to producing environmental awareness and change in daily practices.

The project, part of the Imagina Madrid program, started in January 2018 through a series of co-design sessions in which residents of the neighborhood expressed that water belongs to the recent memory of the Park, and the pond, now empty, is a symbol of its absence. For this reason, the micro-interventions colonize the pond for public use and, at the same time, recover the cultural, territorial and environmental memory of La Vaguada through the new presence of water.

Each intervention is related to a descent that reveals the past and current links with water: from reservoirs, rivers and supply pipelines of the 17th century, to the micro-filtrations that occurred in the last decade, suggesting new ways of relating to water. In addition, the interventions invite to reflect on the environmental value of water as a resource for our consumption or as a habitat for other species (although often contaminated, as in this case). The project aims to contribute to the common construction of an environmental conscience and bring about changes in our daily practices.