Seoullo 7017: Seoul Turns a Motorway Flyover Into a Garden

Seoullo 7017 opened in May 2017 in the centre of Seoul. It is a public garden on top of a former road bridge, about a kilometre long, which crosses the railway tracks beside Seoul Station.

From road to garden

The bridge was built in 1970, one of many elevated roads put up in the years of fast growth to carry cars over the crowded streets. By the 2000s it was judged unsafe for heavy traffic. The city, under the mayor Park Won-soon, decided to keep it and give it to pedestrians. Seoul had already removed one elevated motorway to uncover the Cheonggyecheon stream, a project that changed the centre of the city, and this was the next step.

The name records both dates. The 70 is for 1970 and the 17 for 2017. The 17 also stands for the seventeen stairs, lifts and bridges by which the walk connects to streets and buildings on either side. Seoullo means Seoul street, or towards Seoul.

The design

An international competition was won by the Dutch practice MVRDV, led on this project by Winy Maas. The cost was about US$52 million. The architects treated the bridge as a nursery and a living catalogue of the plants of Korea. More than 24,000 trees, shrubs and flowers of 228 species grow in round concrete planters of different sizes along the walk, with small pavilions for cafés and shops between them.

For travellers

The walk runs from the district of Malli-dong, west of the station, to Hoehyeon, beside the Namdaemun market, and takes twenty minutes without stopping. It is open at all hours and is free. It makes a useful route on foot between Seoul Station and the market, the old south gate of the city and the foot of Namsan, avoiding the roads below. It has little shade in summer, and it is at its best in May, when the roses and the magnolias flower, and after dark.

The project has been compared with the High Line in New York, though it is wider in ambition and narrower in fact. It belongs with other recent additions to the city that are worth an hour, such as the Amorepacific headquarters by David Chipperfield and the Audeum by Kengo Kuma.