Vincent Callebaut aims to span the Seine with veggie-growing gardens

Turning Paris from a City of Light to a City of Green has long been an ambition of architect Vincent Callebaut, and his firm's latest project in this vein envisions a greenery-filled footbridge in the French capital. Named the Green Line, the tree-packed bridge would also be used for growing fruit and vegetables, with an ambitious array of sustainable tech like solar power and wind power included for good measure.

Bringing to mind London's ill-fated Garden Bridge, the Green Line would connect Paris' 12th and 13th Arrondissements, improving pedestrian access between the two areas. Its overall design draws inspiration from the skeleton of a fish and its upper deck would span a length of 220 m (721 ft), while the arching lower deck would span 160 m (524 ft).

As well as the pedestrian walkways, the bridge would contain 3,500 sq m (roughly 37,500 sq ft) of vegetable gardens and orchards, plus there would be another larger 8,500 sq m (91,500 sq ft) of gardens on the nearby riverbank. According to Callebaut, the Green Line would create an impressive 87,500 kg (96 tons) of produce per year in the form of kale, Swiss chard, asparagus, peas, blueberries, and more. The riverbanks would also host office space, retail space, and training rooms, while the river itself would include fish habitats with water filtration systems.

It's ambitious stuff and matched with an ambitious array of sustainability features, too. Hybrid solar panels would produce both power and hot water and work alongside 56 wind turbines, some kind of biogas system (it would be fed non-edible parts of the plants grown to produce energy), while the river would also be used as a heat sink too. Surplus energy would be routed to nearby buildings.

The project also involves Bollinger + Grohman, Greenaffair, and Sempervirens and was commissioned by Ceetrus for an architecture competition. We've reached out to the firm to confirm its status, but it looks like this one is best taken as food for thought.

Source: Vincent Callebaut Architectures