Westpark

This guide to Westpark in Munich traces how a noisy stretch of ring road became a sunken valley park, dug deep enough to swallow the traffic overhead, when the city won the bid to host the 1983 International Garden Show. It follows landscape architect Peter Kluska's design and the more than twenty countries that built temporary gardens for the show, including three hundred Nepalese woodcarvers working on a pagoda they were told would come down after six months. A Chinese scholar's garden, a Japanese garden gifted by sister city Sapporo, and a Thai pavilion were all meant to last one season only.