To achieve this, our design has focused on a combination of a range of components that can positively influence microclimate and help extend the times that the park can be used including sun and shade, wind, water, vegetation and physical shade structures.

The park itself forms part of a primary network of interconnected city canals and river channels that create a natural ‘green-blue’ grid across the city that not only provide attractive and safe recreational open space for the community but also perform an important environmental and resilience role as part of a wider management strategy, helping to reduce the urban heat island effect and creating biodiversity corridors and habitats.

Other climate specific design considerations include providing shade on pedestrian walkways with physical structures and green planting, creating breeze corridors which allow breeze flow through open spaces and identifying cool spots within the park.

Our brief for Central Park is to create a facility that showcases the value of enhancing public space provision in planned cities that is not only accessible and green but most importantly, replicable in other cities across the Philippines and ultimately across other countries in the region.

The importance of making cities more liveable and ultimately more sustainable will be one of the great challenges of the post pandemic era and increasingly we will see urban design strategies that are underpinned by a commitment to high quality climate-responsive public spaces that bring down the temperature and provide space for the population to breathe.