Highwaytopia

Highwaytopia emerges from the opportunity that the Grenzacherstrasse offers to rethink our perception of highway infrastructure. The Rheintunnel plan allows the decommissioning of a central Basel motorway, inspiring new uses for such milieus. By reducing travel speed, the highway becomes a multifunctional backbone with a tramline, bike path, and pedestrian strip. Subtracting some of the built substance of the highway’s concrete viaducts, which cast a strong shadow, is the genesis for a new type of landscape that rises from beneath the overpass. This new penumbra landscape is defined by the interplay between light and shadows. Small music follies set on the highway replace car noises with music of the community. This parade of follies reflects the ephemeral nature of parades, becoming the new scenography of the highway until future experiments arise from needs that are yet to be known. This research sought opportunities to repurpose underused infrastructure in the realm of the ugly and uncanny.