Treetop Walkway, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

The award winning 200m long, 18m high corten steel treetop walkway opened to 9,000 people on its first day enabling visitors to enjoy the splendour of vast swathes of Kew Gardens designed by Capability Brown and its famous glass alpine houses. The visitor experience was further enhanced with entry via an underground rhizotron structure designed to educate on tree root biology.

As Associate and Project Architect with MBA, Chris was responsible for the day to day design and management of the project, bringing further innovation to the design of the modular streel trusses, platform nodes and steel pylons through the implementation of ‘inverse kinematics’ using Gehry Technologies Digital Project which allowed the walkway loop to be designed as a moveable chain with the positioning of pylon structures and pile caps avoiding complex root systems

Links :

https://www.dezeen.com/2008/05/27/kew-tree-top-walkway-by-marks-barfield-architects/

http://www.newsteelconstruction.com/wp/a-view-from-the-top/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1fL5MZFY7g&lc=UgjI2NgJEzIyxHgCoAEC

https://www.dte.co.uk/up-up-and-away-london-eye/

Chris Smiles in association with with Marks Barfield Architects.