Garden
Leaside Bridge is a site where multiple suicides are either attempted or successful each year. Thus we wanted to not only prevent this, but to find ways in which we can use our project to aid mental health.
Project Score
PUBLISHED ON 1st November 2020
Comments (3)
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Trying to prevent more suicides in an area labeled as a black spot in the city is a good goal to rethink this urban void. The premise is correct and very ambitious, and the desire to create a garden has seemed interesting to us, but we believe that the project has not been able to solve it completely well. The sculpture of gigantic dimensions, which emulates a water-harvesting plant, could serve as a landmark and claim to develop leisure and cultural activities, as the covered spaces are places that invite to be colonized. Beyond the organic expression of the object and the landscaped benches, we have found a lack of landscape treatment of the environment, with vegetation, shrubs and trees that make up the open esplanade and help make the transition between the 'closest natural environment and the central space for leisure. However, the presence of water, accumulated in the subsoil, could also appear on the surface, to give way to the approach of birds and diverse fauna coming from the adjacent forests. Nature is a good medicine for emotional well-being!
An area very well used, with a special goal of helping people involved in nature and with an unparalleled aesthetic.
I find the topic of prevention of bridge suicides, which the author addressed, quite interesting and challenging. I am not an expert on mental health, but my intuition says that the presence of people under the bridge could be helpful to reduce attempts. But I doubt that the proposed use of space under the bridge — just sitting — especially considering the lack of connectivity could attract enough people. There are too many seats, and their position in the space is not creating interesting and diverse scenarios of interaction. A person, who decided to commit suicide needs immediate help on the spot — talking to someone. I find it unpleasantly ironic, that in order to talk someone has to jump down. I would suggest the author to think about how to connect in an interesting way the top of the bridge with the forest below, how to bring people there, what kind of programs/activities can be introduced there.