FuturArc Showcase

An emerging paradigm, Green infrastructure is a life support system for the city provided by a network of interconnected natural ecosystems, which supports long-term sustainability and forges a healthier relationship between people and their environment.

Can biodiversity be regarded as infrastructure; can 'green' networks act as the lifelines of an urban system? Infrastructure is the underlying framework of an organisation, facilities and systems connecting and serving an area, for instance communication networks and rail lines. Why should this definition be limited to the technological when there exists a whole other urban structure that is ecological, such as parks, wetlands and green connectors—literally the green lungs of a city that improve living standards, much as a transit system might.

The face of the city as we know it is changing, and it is no longer just about connecting buildings with their host cities but about connecting people with one another and the planet. Green infrastructure should form an integral part of all new developments, alongside other infrastructure, as nature can inform the architecture of a city. We take a look at three Green urban interventions that represent a recent shift in thinking, models for sustainable practices for parks and planning projects around the world, as we move from a technological age into an ecological one.

HIGH LINE
The year 2009 witnessed renewed interest in infrastructure in the US, brought about by debates surrounding the presentation of President Barack Obama's stimulus package, with architects, curators and students rethinking the networks that unite our communities: train lines, highways, bridges, levees, ports and waterfronts. Residents discovered a need to integrate greenery into the cityscape while repurposing industrial spaces that humanise the city, instead of hiding them from view.

No wonder then that a major urban renewal project surfaced in New York City that year. Once considered an urban blight, a disused 1930s freight rail line running 30 feet above the New York streets, which had lain derelict for 23 years, was converted into a radically-engineered passive-use elevated city park that traverses the Lower West Side, with mind-boggling views of the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and Hudson River. This poster child for reusing a space destined for demolition was conceived by the collaborative efforts of James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which chose to respect the wild landscape and original character of the High Line.

ECO-BOULEVARD
Integrating emerging ecological realities and urban infrastructural needs, Eco-Boulevard, a bioclimatic avenue occupying an area of 25,500 square metres in the new nondescript suburban development of Vallecas in Madrid, effectively melds architecture, urbanism and landscape to redefine the way we look at suburban extensions and streets in general. It demonstrates the ability to transform a dull, lifeless neighbourhood into a living, vibrant residential area that favours climatic comfort and pedestrian routes, and create a sense of collective identity where there was none.

An experiment in sustainable urban design to make up for the absence of social activity due to poor planning that made such a project necessary in the first place, Eco-Boulevard has a regenerative effect, encouraging activity and aiming for the bioclimatic adaptation of an outdoor space through the installation of three conditioned, comfortable cylindrical pavilions called "air trees" (which behave like real trees but don't require decades to develop) containing useful internal space along a new pedestrian-friendly road in an edge-of-town extension that is otherwise car-dependent. Built as a temporary structure that offers a long-term solution of how a city streetscape might adapt in accordance with increasingly hotter urban environments, it thus offers the area a new future. The idea to create public spaces that are about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than the surrounding ambient temperature is being developed in various extreme climates worldwide.

HENDERSON WAVES
A 'green' infrastructure approach repositions the role of nature in the city from optional amenity and attractive scenery to a prized and essential supplier of ecosystem services and a platform for more vibrant communities. Thus we come face-to-face with a new breed of high-performance landscapes that form a dynamic network of interdependent systems that animates a city. The idea was to link up Singapore's hill parks by turning Southern Ridges into a 9-kilometre recreational and leisure destination, a chain of interconnected green, open spaces spanning Mount Faber Park, Telok Blangah Hill Park and Kent Ridge Park before ending at West Coast Park.

Highlights include a series of intersecting trails seamlessly uniting a formerly inaccessible sanctuary of greenery, like the Forest Walk and Canopy Walk, which cut through the Adinandra Belukar secondary forest, offering the opportunity to walk at eye-level with the forest canopy. Two prominent connections were built under the Southern Ridges Project. The first bridge, the 80-metre long Alexandra Arch, resembles an opened leaf spread across Alexandra Road. The second is the 274-metre long Henderson Waves, started in 2006 and completed in 2008, which was commissioned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and designed by RSP Architects Planners & Engineers Pte Ltd and IJP Corporation Ltd, UK. "The larger design objective is that the project will perform well as social infrastructure serving the community, and encourage human interactivity and, as a result, enhance meaningful values to the aesthetic and natural environment and to those living in the nearby estates," discloses Raymond Hoe, Associate of RSP Architects Planners & Engineers.

To read the complete profile of the projects featured in Showcase, get a copy of the 1Q 2011 edition at our online shop or at newsstands/major bookstores; or subscribe to FuturArc.

Having lived on three different continents, Y-Jean is no stranger to change. A peripatetic lifestyle such as hers allows her to move easily among cultures, and she quickly adapts and adjusts to new environments, rising to meet the challenges and opportunities that necessarily emerge from the school of life. She finds joy and solace in writing and has been contributing to various regional and international titles, shining a spotlight in particular on art, design and horology. When she's not writing, you'll find her dancing, practising yoga or dreaming up scenarios for a murder-mystery novel she hopes to write in the future.

Table of Contents