The deactivation of the Carlos Prates Airport, in Belo Horizonte, opened up possibilities for using this large area for leisure equipment and environmental preservation. Carlos Prates Ecological Park establishes itself as a necessary ecosystem for the urban fabric of an immediate environment saturated by impermeability, densely occupied by streets, avenues, highways, and buildings of different types.
As a primordial gesture of conception, the airport’s old airstrip was maintained as a circulation axis marked by palm trees and prominent lighting. In this axis, the Carlos Prates Airport Museum was implanted in the form of an aircraft, surrounded by a circular water mirror. The museum will act as an aviation memorial, preserving the historical and heritage values of the airport.
From this axis and from the central point of the museum, leisure equipment radiates, composed especially by a Support Area for the Deaf and Visually Impaired and a Leisure Area for social inclusion, with multisport courts, skate rinks and sanitary facilities.
With two accesses, one through the highway and the other through the neighborhood, the park offers two parking lots, two ponds and a rich landscape that can offer a new microenvironment for small species of fauna. Therefore, the implementation of this environmental group contributes significantly to the construction of a sustainable city with better quality of life for its inhabitants.