Design in focus. Beautiful architecture – Seoullo 7017 Skygarden
Seoullo 7017 Skygarden. Seoul Overpass
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. DESIGN IN FOCUS
The former city highway in Seoul, South Korea has been transformed into an urban public corridor, transporting thousands of pedestrians through what is now considered to be an ‘urban nursery’. MVRDV accepted the challenge of transforming the city and it’s existing vehicular overpass into a dynamic public park.
The vision for this linear park was to house a large collection of Korean plant species. Creating a series of gardens, each one having their own composition; perfume, colour and identity.
The name of this project is taken from the Korean word for ‘Skygarden’ – which is Seoullo and 7017 marks the overpass construction year of 1970, and its new function as a public walkway in 2017.
To break it down into stats – Seoullo is 983m long and houses 50 different plant families, 645 tree planters, 228 species, and subspecies. With the final plant quantity for the project being a total of 24,000. The designers at MVRDV collaborated with the municipality, local NGO’s, landscape teams and city advisers to commit themselves to accommodating the largest diversity of Korean plant species into this urban public corridor.
Seoullo is a viaduct connected by a series of stairs and bridges to surrounding hotels, shops and gardens in the city. These connections to the city are essential for stitching the Skygarden into the urban fabric. The project has become a benchmark for ‘greening’ major cities around the world.
Designers
MVRDV
Landscape Design
Ben Kuipers Landscape Architect – Netherlands
Local Landscape Designer
KECC – Korea
Location
Seoul, South Korea
Client
Seoul Metropolitan Government
Year
2015