The first one was The High Line in New York: a linear park built along the elevated rail line called “West Side Line”, little longer than 2 kilometers that runs on the west side of Manhattan, where Piet Oudolf, an artist of green also known as “the tamer of weeds”, has given rise to an abandoned path by revealing its charm thanks to its privileged high position.
Now all the major cities are planning or building urban gardens in their most unexpected corners. For instance in Seoul the Seoul Skygarden MVRDV is being born and in the meantime a 18-meter mock-up informs the public about what will be built: 938 meters of highway near the Seoul Central Station so to build a more people-oriented and greener city, inhabited by 254 species of trees, flowers and shrubs to create an “arboretum” of local species.
A two-hectare forest is already a reality in Bangkok: designed in 2012 by LAB, Landscape Architects of Bangkok, is cultivated with the method of a Japanese botanical, Akira Miyawaki, which favors the spontaneous growth without any maintenance. In the eastern part of the city of Bangkok, about 6 kilometers far from Suvarnabhumi airport, the area of the disused Prawet district hosts PTT Metro Forest with almost 60.000 trees of 279 unique species, to educate visitors about the ecology of the local forest and to increase awareness of the importance of green spaces, even in big cities.
In Athens, the European city with least green space per capita, there is a 170,000 square meter park in the Stavors Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, with olive trees, pine trees, rose bushes and fragrant oregano, thyme and lavender.
Governors Island – the island ten minutes far by ferry from the Battery station in Lower Manhattan or Brooklyn – is today a floating park open from May to September, with a view on the Statue of Liberty. Designed by the Dutch studium West 8, it has completely redesigned the geography of the island with gardens, planting hundreds of trees, installing a slide for children that is 17 meters long and building two scenic hills, the Outlook Hills from which people could take a selfie with Miss Liberty in the background.
Marco Sandrini, Chief Landscape Designer at Sandrini Green Architecture