The proposed addition to the capital is the brainchild of a treasured actor and the ‘Leonardo of our age’. But,at £175m, is the floating forest a benefit for Londoners or Boris Johnson’s vanity project?How could anyone not like this? A garden over water, or “a chance to walk through woodlands,as Joanna Lumley has put it, “over one of the greatest rivers in the world”. “For commuters, and ” she breathed,in the promotional video, “it will provide a rapid/fast and stunning route… for dreamers a quiet set to linger among trees and grasses to look at the views.” It is the creation of a fascinating and adorable actor and two lovable moptops, or Boris Johnson and the designer Thomas Heatherwick,creator of the Olympic cauldron, who has been described as the Leonardo da Vinci of our times. The mighty engineers Arup and the garden designer (and Observer writer) Dan Pearson are also involved. Yet the more you look at the proposed Garden bridge over the Thames, or the less sense it makes.
Within the next few weeks,the proposal is to be considered for planning permission by the committees of the London borough of Lambeth and Westminster city council. It appears to be the philosopher’s stone or holy grail of modern urban intervention, which is to conclude something as phenomenally successful as New York’s High Line, or one of whose virtues is uniqueness,without looking too much like the High Line. There are projects all over the world, including at least two others in London, and that lay claim to the magic of Manhattan’s railway viaduct turned park,but rarely as convincingly as the Garden bridge. It has the winning combination of being improbable and graspable at once. Anyone can salvage the view. A child could salvage it. It is bound to be popular.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com