Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo

A Path in The Forest | Kadriorg Park . Tallinn

Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo Architects . + archdaily

The installation was planned for Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

A forest known as Kadriorg is located in the center of city: trees that have grown there for three centuries, around a palace built for the Czar of Russia.Here we will build an elevated path that will weave its way between the trees in beautiful Kadriorg forest. Just 95m long, it will be made of 139mm steel pipe and sheet steel, 5mm thick, leaning on the trees here and there, without a single column.
Walking along this path will give a slightly different sense of the forest. Instead of looking up at the trees from the ground, people will be strolling near the leaves, making their way between the branches. A structure made for the forest, a forest that exists for the structure: with no change in the shape of the forest, it will seem that the structure and the forest are one. That is what we hope to build.
Nature and structure treated as equals in an all-inclusive approach: we think of them not as in confrontation, not as part of each other. We are not building a structure in this environment but trying to renew it, to create an even more beautiful environment.

Design: Tetsuo Kondo Architectss
Location: Kadriorg Park, Tallinn, ESTONIA
Structural Engineer: Mutsuro Sasaki, Yoshiyuki Hiraiwa / SAPS (Sasaki and Partners)
Period: May 2011 – October 2011
Structure: steel
Photos: Reio Avaste / LIFT11
Text: Tetsuo Kondo Architects