The Infinity Park: A Figure-Eight Park That Tries to Breathe for Its Neighbourhood

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Q: What is "The Infinity Park: A Figure-Eight Park That Tries to Breathe for Its Neighbourhood" about?

This article covers topics related to Landscape Design, Architecture. A sculptural lung and visitor-triggered oxygen bollards make people the park's breath, and show how narrow a carbon-only idea of clean air can be.

A sculptural lung and visitor-triggered oxygen bollards make people the park's breath, and show how narrow a carbon-only idea of clean air can be.

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UNI Editorial published Results under Landscape Design, Architecture on Oct 14, 2026

Most parks are asked to look green and hope the trees do the rest. The Infinity Park starts from a sharper question: if a designer could help a public space breathe, what would they do? The answer it proposes is part landscape, part machine and part anatomy lesson. Its organizing gesture is a running loop drawn as an endless figure eight, and its most ambitious elements behave less like park furniture than like organs.

The project is by elyana javaheri, credited with design iteration and landscape architecture. It received Editor's Choice at Breathe Free. The proposal is legible and seductive, and it also has clear limits. The jury named both.

A Figure Eight That Never Asks the Runner to Stop

The plan is disarmingly simple. Two circular lawns sit side by side, and a single grey path wraps around both, crossing at the waist to form the infinity symbol that names the park. There is no dead end and no obvious finish line, so the loop invites joggers, cyclists and strollers to keep going for as long as they like. The lawns inside each ring hold open activity: in one rendering, a group stretches in the middle of the grass, framed by the path and a single large shade tree.

The geometry has a cost. With the loop and the two lawns doing most of the work, the leftover corners of the rectangular site become thin margins of planting, a few benches and the edge of the street. The figure eight reads strongly from above, and the renderings show how much of the visitor's experience is organized around motion rather than pause.

Title graphic with vertical strips over a rendering of a flowering tree, a walking figure and joggers on a park path. Image: elyana javaheri

Aerial plan rendering of a figure-eight path around two lawns, with a stream, pink blossom trees and two circular inset views below. Image: elyana javaheri

Rendering of a circular lawn where a group stretches, ringed by a path, lavender beds and a large leafy tree. Image: elyana javaheri

A Bronchial Tree Planted Where the Loops Meet

At the crossing of the two rings stands the project's signature object, labelled the Bronchioles Tree. In the renderings it appears as a tall golden trunk splitting into a dense, branching crown, a literal transcription of the airways of a lung. The diagram reduces it to a pair of yellow lobes with red dashed lines of air drawn in and a blue line of water passing beneath. The idea is moisture swing capture: a material that takes up carbon dioxide from the air and releases it when wetted, which is why the sculpture is set beside the park's water channel rather than on dry lawn.

It is a strong piece of storytelling, and the lung metaphor holds the whole proposal together. Britta Knobel, Founding Partner of Studio Symbiosis, who judged Breathe Free, gave the idea credit and then pointed directly at what it leaves out:

your design idea with moisture swing capture is nice also that it depends on the amount of people entering the park but you only speak about co2. the more harmful particlare are pm10 and pm2.5 in the air and your strategy is not helping to improve air quality for this concern.Britta Knobel, Founding Partner, Studio Symbiosis, India

Axonometric diagram of a park with a circular inset showing a branching tree form, crossed by a blue arrow and a red dashed line. Image: elyana javaheri

Rendered view of two joggers on a curving path beside lavender and yellow plantings, with a pink flowering tree and a standing figure. Image: elyana javaheri

Bollards That Exhale When Someone Walks In

The second system, labelled Pulse, lines the park's street edge. A row of slim vertical columns doubles as boundary markers, and the diagram traces how each one houses an oxygen concentrator, with an inset schematic showing air entering and concentrated oxygen leaving. In the perspective along the sidewalk, the columns release small plumes of mist into the tall golden grasses. The trigger is human presence: the more people enter the park, the more the system responds, so visitors become the bellows of the landscape.

This is the most inventive turn in the scheme. Most public spaces are indifferent to how many people use them; here, use itself is meant to be productive. Placing the bollards on the boundary instead of deep inside the lawns also signals an intention to share the effect with the passing street, not only with the people already in the park.

Axonometric diagram of a park with circular insets detailing a vertical air-filter column, mist plume and an oxygen concentrator schematic. Image: elyana javaheri

Rendered view of tall golden grasses beside a path, with joggers, yoga practitioners and a flowering tree near a pond in soft haze. Image: elyana javaheri

A Ribbon of Water Stitching the Two Lawns Together

Between the rings, a shallow blue channel curves along the inner edge of the path, shadowed by pink blossom trees and edged with lavender and yellow perennials. In the plan it reads as the seam between the two circles; in perspective it becomes a soft, reflective edge that runners pass at arm's length. The channel also feeds the narrative of the Bronchioles Tree, keeping water close to the material that needs it.

These views are the most convincing parts of the presentation as places. Planting beds step down to the water, stepping stones cross the lawn and a timber bench sits beside the stream. The renderings do not show a full planting strategy across the site, but at the scale of the path edge they give the loop a texture and rhythm that the plan alone does not convey.

Rendering of a curving path with two joggers passing a pink flowering tree, lavender beds and a shallow water channel. Image: elyana javaheri

Rendering of a runner and a cyclist beside a curving blue water channel under pink blossoming trees and purple planting. Image: elyana javaheri

Where the Diagram Outpaces the Ground

The airflow diagram draws three overlapping circles over the park: the tree canopy, the Bronchioles Tree and the Pulse edge, with red arrows of carbon dioxide drawn in and green arrows of oxygen pushed out toward the street. It is a clear account of the project's chemistry. As landscape design, it shows the scheme's weakness: the circles describe systems, not zones of use, shade, enclosure or ecology. Amit Gupta, who also judged Breathe Free, was direct about this gap:

in terms of park design the proposal is lacking zoning and landscape design. in terms of improving air quality its only cleaning c02 and very locally improving by giving oxygen so its unfortunately not really a park to breathe fresh air.Amit Gupta, Founding Partner, Studio Symbiosios, India

Axonometric diagram of three overlapping circular park zones with yellow trees and dashed red and green arrows tracing movement and airflow. Image: elyana javaheri

Why This Project Matters

The Infinity Park is worth studying because it refuses the passive park. It treats the visitor as an active participant in the space's metabolism and gives that idea a memorable form: a lung at the centre, oxygen at the edges and an endless loop that keeps bodies moving between them. Few proposals make the relationship between people and air quality this visible.

The jury's critique is just as instructive. Clean air in a city is mostly about particulates, and a park that addresses only carbon dioxide, however elegantly, leaves the most pressing problem untouched. A strong metaphor can carry a concept, but a park still needs zoning, planting logic and a filtration strategy for PM10 and PM2.5 before it can call itself a place to breathe freely. The project's ambition is real; its next iteration needs to match it on the ground.