BIG's Plan For A Stockholm Freeway Looks Like 1970s Sci-Fi

[M II A II R II K]

BIG's Plan For A Stockholm Freeway Looks Like 1970s Sci-Fi


July 15th, 2011

By Alissa Walker

Read More: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664504/...rban-follies#6

Specifications: http://www.big.dk/projects/stp/

Freeways, man. They sever neighborhoods, terrorize nature, and create dark, ugly spaces below their unsightly underpasses. Yet cars continue to need them, and cities continue to build them. So how do we turn those hulking rivers of concrete into assets for our communities? A crazy new idea by BIG for a freeway interchange outside Stockholm just might provide the answer.

- The challenge issued was a familiar one for any major city: Two freeways will be knit together in the town of Hjulsta, north of Stockholm, creating a three-level interchange that divides the surrounding neighborhood, both visually and emotionally. To reunite the community and protect the environment, BIG and its team proposed a master plan they call the Energy Valley, a series of elements that create movement and beauty around this busy intersection.

- To counteract the wall of cars created by the two freeways, BIG added a series of circular paths for bikes and pedestrians that travel around the intersection in a loop, turning the interchange into a landscaped park. These paths weave over and under the freeways, traveling through forests, wetlands, and lawns -- all of which can be shaped using the earth that's excavated during the building of the freeways themselves. The flat valleys further away from the freeways become places for high-tech businesses to set up shop, giving residents a reason to move there.

- From an urban planning perspective, the circular path becomes the new heart of the community, and development is spurred along this corridor. So shopping, entertainment and recreation can all be clustered close to the interchange, pushing the community even tighter together, even with a freeway running through it.

- Perhaps the most stunning element of the plan -- and the one that makes it look like the cover of a '70s sci-fi novel -- is the Stockholm Sphere, a giant reflective orb that hovers over the interchange, making the view once obstructed from the freeway visible on all four sides. According to the proposal, photovoltaic film covers the orb, supplying it with enough solar energy to float, as well as the ability to power over 200 homes.

.....

[llamaorama]

I assume the big ball of shinyness is essentially a hot air balloon?

What happens when there is a storm and it blows away and crashes into the neighborhood across the road?

[the urban politician]

That reflecting floating orb looks so damn silly...

[M II A II R II K]

At night they can attract crowds by using it for a disco.

[Swede]

"From an urban planning perspective, the circular path becomes the new heart of the community, and development is spurred along this corridor. So shopping, entertainment and recreation can all be clustered close to the interchange, pushing the community even tighter together, even with a freeway running through it."
Pure BS. The whole motorway bypass that this is a tiny part of is just one big pro-sprawl project. Interesting to note is that almost all of it will be in the form of a tunnel so as to reduce the nimbyite opposition, but NOT towards the ends - where there are poor concrete 'hoods with lots of immigrants. The richer suburbs won't be blighted with a motorway next door, but those two places that already have interstates 50 m from the buildings will get yet another one.
Original stated purpose of this motorway when planned in the 60s: more sprawl.
Currently stated purpose: reduce traffic in the inner city and get rid of thru traffic.
Projected effects according to the DoT: big increase in traffic all-round in the county and noticeably reduce mode-share for public transit.


Spending at least 30 billion crowns making the metro area more auto-dependent: great if you're a car-industry lobbyist, sucks for the rest of us.

[hammersklavier]

The renderings make it look like a crater...a crater with a disco ball in the middle. A disco ball that will almost certainly be value-engineered out.

While this plan smacks of ridiculousness and Landscape Urbanism lack-of-restraint, there is some validity to the idea that freeway easements could be used to build linear parks and pedestrian and multi-use connections--particularly in more park-starved cities.

Also for a total riot of way-too-full-of-themselves architects, check out BIG's website.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

I assume the big ball of shinyness is essentially a hot air balloon?

What happens when there is a storm and it blows away and crashes into the neighborhood across the road?

I would give that ball a month in the midwest of the United States.

[mind field]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

That reflecting floating orb looks so damn silly...

Ditto. Lame.

[Swede]

Update!

The balloon seems to have been dropped from the project. The crater is still the basic plan though, but now with a semi-dense, semi-urban little enclave next to it to the north. That enclave will not be connected to any other development or built-up area. Still, the planenrs and politicians are calling it a part of the "Walkable City" (Promenadstaden) - the name of the City's Ovar-all Plan (Översiktsplan).

[hammersklavier]

Called it!

[Swede]

Yeah. No big surprise at all that they dropped the balloon.

[Busy Bee]

They really dropped the ball on this one...

[mrnyc]

throwing around the old walkable city to promote a new highway, eh? see? its really an environmentally friendly green project folks!

[scalziand]

Haven't we learned that rotary junctions don't work for high volume junctions?

[ardecila]

Massachusetts rotaries are not a good example of roundabout design. This design is used successfully across Europe, and extensively in Stockholm.

Who said this will be high volume, anyway? The intersecting highways aren't interstates in the American sense; they're more like state highways. Down the line they have at-grade roundabouts.

Another advantage of the rotary design is that local access to the adjacent neighborhood can be tied directly into the rotary, instead of requiring another exit somewhere else. This adjacent neighborhood is pretty well-established and has a metro station no farther than 1/2 mile from the center of the roundabout.

[Jonboy1983]

This roundabout interchange idea makes me think of such an interchange in New Jersey just across the Ben Franklin Bridge, where US 30, NJ 38 and 130. It's not quite as noticeable as the one pictured here, but there definitely is a traffic circle there.

Doesn't make the interchange any better. It's still confusing as all hell.

As far as the whole floating orb thing is concerned, I'd say that would've been a good way to turn this intersection into a multi-car pile-up hell. I'd find that to be rather distracting...