Dialogue between palace and land—rain garden and hydrological restoration strategies for sustainable landscape renewal at the Alhambra

This research develops a regenerative framework for the renewal of the Alhambra landscape, integrating distributed rain-garden systems with hydrological restoration under the conceptual premise of Dialogue Between Palace and Land. The study formulates an adaptive model that reconciles heritage conservation with climate-responsive water management. Confronted with increasing drought, episodic flooding, and soil degradation, the Alhambra is reinterpreted as both a testing ground and a new conceptual framework that functions as a metaphor for water-sensitive heritage design, where ecological performance and cultural imagination converge. GIS-based terrain and flow analyses delineate priority zones for decentralized rain-garden interventions, while field infiltration testing and UAV-derived NDVI mapping evaluate ecological response. Quantitative results indicate up to a 30 % reduction in surface runoff and a 15 % increase in infiltration capacity, accompanied by significant gains in vegetative vitality. The selective reactivation of historical channels and passive irrigation conduits revives a dormant ecological memory, reconnecting the site's historical hydraulic intelligence with contemporary regenerative practice. Beyond technical outcomes, the study conceptualizes water as a regenerative aesthetic medium that operates with dual agency-as ecological infrastructure and as cultural expression-through which form, ecology, and perception are interwoven. Within this synthesis, the Alhambra transcends its role as a historical relic to emerge as an operative prototype of regenerative landscape, demonstrating resilience through beauty and adaptation through memory, and positioning itself as a paradigm of water-sensitive heritage intervention.