I’ve been meaning to put up a sketch of this since I started this site. This proposal is to add plants to a public transportation system by building onto the existing advertising light panels.

“The “Finger Plan” from 1947 was a pioneering attempt to locate the urban development of Copenhagen along five radials or “fingers” which connected the centre of the city with five older market towns in the region. The vision was that green wedges or corridors should dominate the space between the fingers which was characterised by transport and urban structures. The green corridors had a double function; they were partly to function as the lungs of Copenhagen and partly to function as green recreational spaces for the people living in the compact city districts of Copenhagen (Ferdinansen, 2002, p. 80-83).”

From Urban Green Spaces and Social Well Being

Cutest name ever for a project of this kind: BUGS, “Benefits of Urban Green Space”

Summary from their web site:

The inter-related issues of urban sprawl, traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution are major socio-economic problems faced by most European cities. The main objective of BUGS is to develop an integrated methodology to assess the role of green space in alleviating the adverse effects of urbanisation. Addressing the impact of green areas on such diverse areas as traffic flows and emissions, air quality, microclimate, noise, accessibility, economic efficiency, and social well-being, this methodology will allow to deduce a set of guidelines regarding the use of green space as a design tool for urban planning, at scales ranging from a street canyon or a park to an entire urban region. Potential end-users are actively involved to help focus and steer the work. Supported by a marketing strategy, the ultimate goal is to turn the methodology into a self-sustaining activity, to be offered as a service to urban and regional authorities in Europe.

Zumthor’s spa in Vals Therme opens visitors to the surrounding natural environment. Although the building is stone, it’s made of stone from the mountains nearby, although the architecture can be cavernous at points, there is always an experience of moving from the earth-core, the stone-nest out into the open nature. Even in the dead of the Swiss winter, exposure to falling snowflakes while standing in the thermal waters outside felt like a ‘greenspace’.

Patrick Blanc extends the green roof idea to the external walls of buildings.

Why introduce green space into the Subway or any other public space? To encourage contact with so called ‘natural’ environments. Contact with non-toxic biological entities (plant or animal) offers potential to reduce suffering and encourage mental states of well being. For an introduction to the literature on the healing effect of ‘natural’ spaces see Hartig’s bibliography on the Uppsala University web site.