Architect：CIVIC Architects

Location：Geneva, Switzerland; | ;View Map

Project Year：2014

Category：Parks/Gardens

We designed and constructed one of the 13 pieces for ‘Villes et champs’, a public art and garden festival in Genève focusing on co-habitation of the urban and the natural. The site, a busy highway overpass, is out-of-tune with the idea of the landscape as a peaceful natural haven. Instead, the installation emphasizes the infrastructural character of the site and tries to prove that even these locations of traffic and car dealers – despite their anonymous and generic character that is seemingly devoid of any artistic value – can play an important role in the production of food and plants.

closed system of transparent tubes clinging onto the bridge is used for the cultivation of algae, which grows exclusively on sunlight and CO2; two products abundantly present on the site. The organisms can be used to filter air as combustible biomass, or even as raw material for different cosmetic and alimentary products. A steel structure, supporting all the secondary equipment such as pumps, filters, and solar panels, functions as a marker for the quickly passing traffic and provides explanations on a more detailed level for pedestrians and cyclists. The pulsating movement of the algae signals practices of the future; the harvesting of goods in the dense environment of a metropolis, the conservation of green space, and the reinterpretation of existing infrastructures.

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