project overview

This project was a renovation proposal for an abandoned railway station that the authorities are converting into a transit stop to and from the international airport in my city.
To understand the location and figure out the part of it that we want to conserve, I chose to put my focus on animals and make sure that their lives are not disrupted with this new station. So after studying their movement patterns, I proposed to build a nature bridge primarily for the animals, but one which could also be used as a nature walk for humans.
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The details of the structure - including all the dimensions and materials are thought out and made into scale models. I made three scale models - 1:200, 1:100 and 1:20 since I thought that all of these brought out different details of the project out.

Central question - How do we make sure that the movement of the animals is not disrupted with the coming of the new station

some insights generated through research

To understand how animal crossings have been built in the past, I studied some case studies out of which two stood out to me - The Ecolink Bridge in Singapore and Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. I took some learnings out of these that I wanted to incorporate in my own design:
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• Try and have trees planted on top, along with grass and other plants.
• Redirect animals to use the bridge by fencing the rest of the area, keeping only the bridge entrance open.
• Have security in the form of guards or cameras.

I also took a survey to understand if people would also be willing to use a bridge like this. These are the responses I recieved:
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• People said no because they were either scared of animals, or the crowd. They would preferit if there was a fence of some sort that separated them from the rural users.
• People said yes because they said it got them closer to nature.
• Most people said that they would not mind either, and it would depend on the proximity ofthe bridge from the main building.

It was clear from the responses that although some people had strong opinions about whether or not they would use such a facility, most were not bothered by it. This is in a way better for the animals and rurals, since if there was a high number of people on the bridge, it would still end up disrupting their movement.

process

functions

initial clay model

To understand the structure better myself and to see whether it would work, I made a clay model with reference to the dimensions of a printed layout of the space. Although aesthetically this worked well, what I did not take into account was the steepness of the sloping ground. I then had to change the measurements and realised that I needed alot more ground area to be able to make the structure.

final clay model

To fix the problem I mentioned above, I added spirals at both the ends of the bridge so that it would be in line with the pblic space standards in the city and would be comfortable enough to walk on.

scale models

To make the final scale models, I used chipboard, wooden sticks, tiny stones and tons of scrap paper that I found around the house.

1 : 200

1 : 100

1 : 20