The Other City 2026: city and nature in Madrid
From 20 November to 12 December 2026, The Other City returns to Madrid for a second edition devoted to the boundaries, sometimes blurred and sometimes intertwined, between urban space and nature: landscape, the senses, the body, memory, intangible heritage and territory. The programme, a project by CEPS Projectes Socials and #plantauno, brings together a lecture, a round table of projects and several actions in public space, from urban and contemplative dérives to site-specific performance, in the districts of Usera, Vicálvaro, San Blas-Canillejas and Chamartín.
Marco Noris takes part in the round table on 20 November and, the following day, leads Limbic Zones, a collective dérive around the Ambroz lagoons.
🚶 Limbic Zones: a dérive around the Ambroz lagoons 📆 Saturday 21 November 2026, 11 am – 2 pm. 📍 Ambroz lagoons (Vicálvaro – San Blas-Canillejas, Madrid). 👥 Capacity: 35 people. Free admission, registration required. ✍️ Registration: The Other City (Madrid) on Eventbrite
Limbic Zones
Hemmed in by roads, motorways and dual carriageways on the eastern edge of Madrid, the Laguna Grande de Ambroz fills the pit of a sepiolite mine that was worked as an open-cast operation between 1977 and 2007. When extraction stopped, water slowly filled the excavation, followed by birds, plants and footpaths. The mine has now been authorised to reopen and a new housing development is planned on the surrounding land, while environmental and residents’ groups are calling for the area to become a “Casa de Campo of the East”, a counterpart to Madrid’s great urban park.
The dérive invites participants to walk, with no fixed route, through this space suspended between what it was and what it is not yet, guided by a shared question: what is full and what is empty? Each participant will record the experience in the medium of their choice, and the routes, tracked with Walking Lines, will be overlaid on a collective map that will open the final discussion. The activity is run with the participation of the residents’ platform Salvar las Lagunas de Ambroz y su Entorno.
I enter a swamp as a sacred place—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength—the marrow of Nature. […] A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.
Programme
Friday 20 November · Espacio Oculto (Calle de Nicolás Usera, 27, Usera)
- 6 pm. Opening lecture: “Art and Territory in Contexts of Reciprocity” (Arte y territorio en contextos de reciprocidad), by Elvira Pujol (Sitesize).
- 7 pm. Round table of projects: “Closing the Distance: Artistic Practices and Landscape” (Acortar distancias. Prácticas artísticas y paisaje), with Malú Cayetano Molina (water, memory and the city), Marco Noris (artist and walker), Sonia Pérez Olmedillo (Cuerpo de calle) and Eduardo Barba (gardener and landscape designer). Chaired by Elvira Pujol.
Saturday 21 November · 11 am – 2 pm · Ambroz lagoons (San Blas-Canillejas)
- Action in public space: “Limbic Zones: A Dérive around the Ambroz Lagoons. A Possible ‘Casa de Campo of the East’?” (Zonas límbicas: una deriva por las Lagunas de Ambroz. ¿Una posible «Casa de Campo del Este»?), with Marco Noris. Capacity: 35.
Saturday 28 November · 12 noon · Quinta de los Molinos park
- Action in public space: “Flowers at Our Feet: Discovering Urban Botany” (Flores a nuestros pies, descubrir la botánica urbana), with Eduardo Barba. Meeting point: main entrance to the park, Calle de Alcalá, 527 (next to Suanzes metro station, Line 5). Duration: 1 hr 30 min. Capacity: 30.
Saturday 12 December · 11 am · Chamartín district (exact location to be confirmed)
- Action in public space: “Street Body: A Sensory Walk” (Cuerpo de calle. Paseo sensorial), with Sonia Pérez Olmedillo and Noelia Iglesias. Duration: 2 hrs.
All activities are free, with prior registration on Eventbrite.
Full programme (PDF): The Other City 2026 · Madrid
The Other City
The Other City brings together practices, projects, collectives and organisations that, through cultural and artistic work, turn their attention to liminal territories: approaches to the ex-centric in discursive, institutional, political, territorial and formal terms. Community work, civic action, activism, urban dérive, anthropology, performance and collective knowledge meet in a programme that asks about the places we inhabit and their horizon of possibility.
A project by CEPS Projectes Socials and #plantauno, in collaboration with Espacio Oculto Madrid and with the support of Madrid City Council (Culture, Tourism and Sport).