heatherwick.com
We’re all sadly aware of the high level of air pollution of the biggest metropolis of the world, mostly the Chinese ones, cruxes of the industries of this century. Today we rarely see in a picture of the city a bright sun or a clear sky; if we’re lucky, a postcard from Shanghai could only depict a thick and persistent blanket of fog or people walking with anti-smog masks. But the Paris climate agreement signed also by China could stop or at least limit the emissions of the second biggest city of China, that is Shanghai.
To do this, it’s been planning the requalification of a 15 acres site of the city located near the art district, the M50, that currently hosts a public park, ancient buildings and govern palaces. In this area new constructions will be built in which the principal protagonists will be plants and trees, following what’s going on around the world, like already said about the Vertical Wood in Milan. But what will rise will not be normal buildings: indeed, the M50 was not meant to be a normal complex of buildings, but a serried series of buildings which dislocate in two different heights to give the idea of two mountains covered by trees among the many grey skyscrapers. The most important element of the project will be the 1000 and more bearing pillars that will populate this area and, instead of being hidden by the facades of the buildings, they’ll be easily within sight rising upon the buildings, holding up plants and trees of any kind. The distinctive trait of this project is that initially only the bearing pillars were built at different heights, and only after they have been united to form regular structures in the space, to give the idea of a growing mountain, getting an amazing glance.
Besides green spaces, the absolute protagonist is the space itself, the rediscovered contact between man and the outside space, through the construction of 400 and more terraces and verandas at different heights. All this is added to the already present context composed by the public park that will rise at the bottom of the two mountains, that will function as natural slopes, and the Huangpu river that flows next to one side of the artistic district.
In this space will rise schools, several workplaces and places of leisure, small shops and spaces for everyday life, and every person that will pass by maybe will breath that air which since too much time isn’t breathed anymore.
