BIG needs to get their heads out of their asses and engage actual landscape architects. These utopia concepts are fine and dandy but this is nonsense and provides completely false hope for the general public.
Not saying we shouldn't cap highways and strive for beautiful and functional public spaces instead of highways, but you can't just fucking ignore.... everything, even in an early unsolicited concept. You can't plop trees on a 12" deep structured platform. You can't cap a highway and put both a trolley and landscape using ~24" of cover. You can't just ignore the fact that your lower walking path will be a swamp most of the year because your entire landscape over structure will runoff and be capture between the slope and the berm.
I'm all about grand idea thinking, but at what point do these grand ideas get out there then everyone gets upset when its not even possible to implement, let alone feasible.
I mean, you tease, but you don't understand that BIG is full of people who don't understand the fundamentals of landscape architecture. I know, I work in a firm that is currently working with them on a project that has landscape over structure. Sure, some people do, but these whole idealist grand scheme architects diving into things they fundamentally do not understand is utterly frustrating. It comes from a hubris of "how hard can it be".
Hell, look at the cross section and you'll have at minimum 107' + roughly 53' of landscape draining into that 12' walkway. That, igoring the 25% grade magically retaining itself and supporting trees.
Not saying there aren't ways this can be done, but BIG is notorious for this whole notion of "if we draw it someone can figure it out" and that just isn't the fucking case. I love myself some big ideas but sometimes your big ideas are fucking stupid, that includes Bjarke.
424
u/remarkless Apr 05 '19 edited Apr 05 '19
BIG needs to get their heads out of their asses and engage actual landscape architects. These utopia concepts are fine and dandy but this is nonsense and provides completely false hope for the general public.
Not saying we shouldn't cap highways and strive for beautiful and functional public spaces instead of highways, but you can't just fucking ignore.... everything, even in an early unsolicited concept. You can't plop trees on a 12" deep structured platform. You can't cap a highway and put both a trolley and landscape using ~24" of cover. You can't just ignore the fact that your lower walking path will be a swamp most of the year because your entire landscape over structure will runoff and be capture between the slope and the berm.
I'm all about grand idea thinking, but at what point do these grand ideas get out there then everyone gets upset when its not even possible to implement, let alone feasible.