Telok Blangah Hill Park’s Flying Infrastructure in the Sky

If you enjoyed our coverage of New York City’s High Line raised park, we think Telok Blangah Hill Park’s dizzying infrastructure will “elevate” you to an ever higher level. Located in Singapore, the park’s fly-over style “walkways” are reminiscent of those ancient rope bridges you see suspended over caverns in movies, giving you the very rare experience of viewing towering treetops from a monkey’s perspective. The pathways and suspension bridges are anything but rickety though. In fact, many of them are elegant works of art and architectural precision. But at 120 feet above the forest floor at their highest points, they aren’t for the faint of heart!

Telok Blangah is certainly breathtaking, but it also has the right kind of attitude when it comes to respecting nature. While some parks are constructed by chopping trees down to make room for open space and eliminating the animals that make their home there, Telok Blangah’s layout chose to preserve the natural landscape and instead build around it. Furthermore, the web-like paths consist of open structures which allow light and air to pass through. Some of the most awe-inspiring connection points are the undulating Henderson Waves (Singapore’s highest pedestrian bridge) and Alexandra Arch, which sparkles every night with a dazzling colour-changing LED lightshow.

Another amazing feature of this leafy treetop paradise is the fact that you can actually come face to face with some of the rich wildlife that lives there such as squirrels, sunbirds, doves, lizards and white-crested laughing thrushes. In fact, researchers frequent the nearby HSBC Treetop Walk to study the rain forest canopy which, if not for the unique aerial structures, would not be an easy place to access at all.

If all that nature makes you long for the bustling city, you don’t have to look very far to regain sight of the Singaporean metropolis. Many areas of the park treat visitors to panoramic views of the skyline, which is a vista that you don’t find in most nature preserves. With today’s architectural sentiment leaning towards mingling green spaces and cities rather than creating unnecessary divisions between them, Telok Blangah Hill Park is a real-life example of how successfully nature and architecture can combine.