Copyright 2017 Andrea Donelli andrea.donelli@unitn.it ISSN online 2531-9906 | Open access article under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License UPLanD – Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & environmental Design, 2(1), 117-135 [2017] Research & experimentation Ricerca e sperimentazione DRAWING TO RESTORE AND REPRESENT URBAN GREEN SPACE IN SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE Andrea Donelli Department of civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering, University of Trento, IT HIGHLIGHTS • Drawing is the condition without which you cannot understand the orographic and urban history of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. • Drawing or restoration project? Drawing reveals a strengthening experience, as it delineates the description of the facts. • The Barranco de Santos and the Parque García Sanabria constitute, by analogy with the city of Santa Cruz, the aorta and the heart, element and vital organ in the morphological description. • The design of the green space reconciles and fixed again the historic, infrastructural, and cultural relationships of the city. ABSTRACT The territory, morphology and urban order of Santa Cruz de Tenerife constitute a singular unity. The datum is to be found in the design of this island, which is closely related, even with its history, to the orographic system. Santa Cruz de Tenerife is shaped by two unique events. The first, geographically and territorially recognizable, is the Barranco de Santos; the second consists of the shape, only apparently irregular, that delineates the ample green space of Parque Municipal García Sanabria. Both of these systems have been the targets of a particular and demanding re-design, or restoration project, aimed at rehabilitating the site, executed with skill by the architects Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar and Leopoldo Tabares de Nava. The important element is the fact that these two events are the expression of the island's very life. Their rehabilitation has returned to the inhabitants both the green spaces and the possibility to use the infrastructures that determine them. Thus it strengthened a sort of reconciliation between the natural balance of the city and the use the inhabitants make of these restored green spaces. The success of the project was ensured by the architects’ understanding of the indivisible unity of the two systems, and of their having returned to the island’s inhabitants green spaces not only correlated with the city’s history, but above all destined to be experiences with a modality of usage and not of consumption. ARTICLE HISTORY Received: February 12, 2017 Reviewed: March 08, 2017 Accepted: March 12, 2017 On line: April 25, 2017 KEYWORDS A drawing for a restoration Observations on the drawing of green spaces An experience between drawing and project The design of Santa Cruz de Tenerife The unity between drawing and morphology