A Highline for Hyde Park.-
A new piece of green infrastructure that is designed to bridge between Hyde Park and Green Park, allowing people to seamlessly wander between parks via a new linear park that exists at both high level and beneath the walkways. The scheme seeks to integrate growing elements in manmade structures. The inspiration for this approach is two fold one hand inspired by the quality of walking along a tree covered street where the trees form a dynamic patterns of light and shade changing through out the day. The other is the relation to nature shown in landscape paintings of Turner, Lorrain and Poussin these works often show pastoral landscapes and a seamless integration of greenery city and architecture into a harmonious whole. It represents a kind of urban intervention taken from 18th and 19th century town planning.
The chosen site, is highly prominent and historic site, care has been taken to avoid interacting with key vistas from Constitution Hill.
Beneath the multileveled gyratory is the access to Hyde Park Corner and a network of subterranean pedestrian passageways one aim of the new line is to create new accesses to the station and liberate people from walking in often dark and unsafe underground passageways.
The key aspects of the design have been informed by the local context. The principals of the raised routes are flexible and could be applied in a greater or lesser extent in a number of locations. The sizing coverage of the could be adapted and the column spacing/ sizes adapted to other junctions parks.
Yokohama Ferry Terminal.-
The new proposal is imagined as a piece of urban topography that has been lifted and split into a series of folded layers, in some places it is a read as a piece of extruded groundscape embedded with functions. In other places it hovers over the portside stretching out into the sea. In some respects in mirrors the range of experiences associated with the travellers it houses both mundane commuter facility and visionary landscape for journeys not yet taken. At its heart is an interest in how this mega structure supports its present function, how it could be adapted and how the fabric itself can be harnessed to support both itself and potentially its wider urban context.
The buildings urban strategy is to create a continuous inhabitable surface from the existing parks on the main land all the way out onto the pier, this allows Yokohama citizens to enjoy the panoramic views of the city by lifting this civic amenity off the ground, it does not interfere with the functioning of the port terminal itself. The central three columns that support the roof act as more than structure on an urban level they provide the connection between the public parking and the roof top garden via a winding stair inside the roof depth itself, At this point the roof sides are permeable allowing both ferry users and citizens to overlap whilst never touching.
