Parametric Design Approaches as Interfaces for Semi-Open Public Spaces in Historic Environments: The Metropol Parasol Case

Abstract

Historic environments require contemporary interventions to negotiate new spatial demands without treating heritage, public use, climatic affordances, and structural logic as separate concerns. This study examines parametric design as an architectural interface in a historically layered semi-open public space. Interface denotes the built relational system through which rule-based geometry negotiates historic and archaeological constraints, public-space organization, environmental affordances, and structural-geometric requirements. A qualitative critical single-case analysis of Metropol Parasol in Seville applies a literature-informed 12-criterion framework to published drawings, sections, photographs, project and engineering documentation, and academic sources. The project is not reconstructed through parametric modelling; no simulation, measurement, user survey, behavioural observation, accessibility audit, or comparative canopy test is conducted. Evidence is coded as supported, qualified, not supported, or not established and synthesized across spatial mediation, environmental responsiveness, and structural-geometric logic. The analysis supports relationships among variable grid geometry, support placement, ground-level permeability, programmatic layering, shading affordance, modular coordination, and documented constructability. Contextual continuity, access provision, daylight mediation, ventilation affordance, and structural organization remain qualified, while thermal-comfort outcomes are not established. The study contributes an interface-centred analytical lens that integrates domains usually treated separately in HBIM, performance-led parametric research, and historic public-space studies. Its transferability is methodological and conditional rather than predictive; the findings do not verify social vitality, universal accessibility, environmental performance, visual acceptance, or conservation outcomes.