We love everything about our city: contradictions, chaos and crowded streets, a thousand dazzling lights and dynamics. We cannot do without it, yet every so often we need a little pause: to detach ourselves from it, without however “betraying it”, simply by looking at it from another perspective. Have you ever tried to visit an urban park ? It is here that the city reveals its hidden, different side and allows us to enter another dimension.
This is precisely the purpose that inspired the British author Toby Musgrave, who in his latest book Green Escapes lists a vast collection of urban areas, parks and gardens , scattered in the metropolises of the world: green corners, not necessarily known, in to restore body and soul.
Among Musgrave’s favorites, Wendy’s Secret Garden in Sydney , Australia, was born from the effort of a woman, Wendy Whiteley, who concentrated the pain of losing her husband in an ambitious project in her memory: transforming a piece of abandoned land turned into landfill between his house and the railway that separated it from the bay. A bizarre and vibrant space was born between Lavender Bay and Clark Park, full of native ferns, bright flowers and palm trees.
Created in 2003 on the site of the former Osaka baseball stadium in Japan , Namba Parks is a green area incorporated into a huge shopping mall. A rock canyon winds through the center and each terrace offers something to discover: groves of trees, waterfalls and vegetable gardens that wind between boutiques and restaurants. Another pearl of the Rising Sun is located in Fukuoka, the southernmost of the main Japanese islands. This is the ACROS Fukuoka Prefectural International Hall: 15 vegetation-covered terraces stand on the building that houses the Fukuoka Symphony Hall, exhibition spaces and a tourist information center.
57925060 – fukuoka, japan – april 10, 2014: front view of acros fukuoka prefectural international hall in fukuoka, kyushu, japan. acros fukuoka is the eco-building and landmark of fukuoka that has a green roof.
In Europe, one cannot fail to mention the Vertical Forest , which stands out on the Milanese skyline on the edge of the Isola district. In 2014 the skyscraper won the International Highrise Award , for the perfect symbiosis between architecture and nature: each of the 113 dwellings opens onto terraces planted with trees, creepers and shrubs, which together amount to 10 thousand square meters of forest.