In Belém, the port city on the edge of Brazil’s vast Amazon basin, a once-neglected canal has been transformed into urban intervention for civic wellbeing. Designed by Brazilian architecture studio Natureza Urbana, DOCA Linear Park reimagines a stretch of disused infrastructure as a green corridor that reconnects nature, community and the rhythm of city life.
The project elevates a continuous pedestrian and cycle route above the canal’s surface, creating a light structural ribbon for movement that traces the waterway while offering new interactions with the river and the urban skyline. This elevated promenade is designed to weave together a series of light modular pavilions, shaded terraces and viewing points that invites spontaneous uses such as resting, socialising and reflective interaction with the biodiversity and landscape.
The design’s strength lies in its restraint, instead of imposing a heavy architectural footprint, Natureza Urbana embraces adaptable, lightweight structures that harmonise with the landscape. Layers of native vegetation and gentle terracing foster natural habitat formation and improve local microclimate conditions, softening the once-harsh concrete environment into a vibrant ecosystem for both people and ecology.
DOCA Linear Park celebrates water not as a constraint, but as the project’s central character — a living element around which Belém can rediscover its public life. Through this sensitive intervention, the city gains more than an urban park; it gains an adaptable infrastructure for social connection, pedestrian mobility and ecological restoration.
