MVRDV’s Seoul Skygarden Is like the high Line On Steroids

transfer over, excessive Line: Rotterdam-based design agency MVRDV has developed a successful concept for a skygarden in Seoul that might just change into the brand new gold standard for public parks that repurpose outdated infrastructure.

The Seoul Station Overpass is a three,000-foot accelerated highway operating through the South Korean capital. at the start build in the Seventies over Seoul’s greatest educate station to connect the Namdaemun Market to parks in the west, the Seoul Station Overpass was once declared dangerous for autos in 2006. MVRDV’s plan for the Seoul Station Overpass turns it into some type of delusion backyard out of Rivendell.

it is hardly the primary idea for a public park that reuses previous infrastructure. Ever since the opening of latest York’s magnetic expanded high Line, now we have considered no finish of copycats: an multiplied park for Washington D.C., Thomas Heatherwick’s thought for a floating park in new york, and Chicago’s El Line, to name just a few.

MVRDV’s thought is unique for repurposing automotive infrastructure—the bane of vivid city dwelling all over the place—into a type of “living dictionary of the national heritage of Korea,” to cite to MVRDV’s press observation. In cooperation with Dutch design studio Studio Makkink & Bey and panorama clothier Ben Kuipers, MVRDV plans to transform the overpass’s 104,000-sq.-foot house—about the dimension of two football fields—right into a pedestrian walkway, as well as a public arboretum of 254 trees, timber, and plants. The plant life will likely be prepared along the skygarden according to where every species’ identify falls within the Korean alphabet.

The Skygarden can be anticipated to have a consumer element. it’s going to be lined with cafes, flower retail outlets, boulevard markets, libraries, and even greenhouses. MVRDV even intends for the skygarden to function as a nursery, elevating timber and other crops for distribution in public spaces all over Korea.

Now that MVRDV’s design has been chosen, building on the Seoul Skygarden will kick into high tools: the government of Seoul needs the undertaking accomplished simply two years from now, in 2017. That appears formidable in comparison with initiatives like the excessive Line renovation, which took six years (any many, many extra years of planning), but the Seoul Skygarden will handiest be a third as long.

extra details about the Seoul Skygarden can be discovered on MKRDV’s web page here.