Green Bridges: Hong Kong could get its own ‘garden in the sky’

 

Vision for Thames Bridge in London

Vision for Thames Bridge in London

Hong Kong bridges could go green, just like London and New York: designer

Hong Kong bridges can go green, just like the Garden Bridge proposed in London or the landmark High Line in New York, says Thomas Heatherwick, the British designer behind the planned £150 million garden in the sky over the River Thames. Heatherwick said green infrastructure had potential in Hong Kong, albeit on a smaller scale.

Victoria Harbour is out of the picture, though. It spans about one kilometre between Central and Tsim Sha Tsui – too wide for a bridge, according to Heatherwick – compared to the Garden Bridge’s 370 metres. But the city could look into other options.

Thomas Heatherwick_UK designer_120p“The elevated walkways did not work in Europe because the cities don’t have that density,” he said yesterday. “But in Hong Kong, [the bridges] between buildings – for example, in Central – are incredibly successful.” Heatherwick said he was in early talks on Hong Kong government projects about urban greenery.

The Garden Bridge project, an elevated walkway with gardens and shrubs to connect Temple in central London to the South Bank, may be London’s answer to the High Line, an elevated public park built on an abandoned 1930s railway line through Manhattan.

New York’s High Line

The High Line is a 1.6 km New York City linear park built on a 2.33 km section of the elevated former New York Central Railroad spur called the West Side Line, which runs along the lower west side of Manhattan; it has been redesigned and planted as an aerial greenway. A similar project in Paris, the 4.8 km Promenade plantée, completed in 1993, was the inspiration for this project.

Acknowledgement:

Reproduced from an article posted by the South China Morning Post

New York High Line - abandoned railway line re-purposed as a greenway

New York High Line – abandoned railway line re-purposed as a greenway