The Department for Transport is refusing to release an internal report on the cancelled Garden Bridge project, claiming this would prejudice the commercial interests of the trust that developed it, now in liquidation.

The Garden Bridge scheme, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and championed by Boris Johnson while mayor of London, collapsed in August 2017. It left taxpayers with a bill of £43 million, making it one of the costliest public scandals in British political history. — Architects' Journal

“Given the diversity of the buildings emerging within the Qianhai area, our preference was for a simple, bold, and confident insertion into the existing master plan,” says Spence. “The formality derives from the existing road grid and building plots, combined with our desire to maximize the area of raised green park linking the city to the bay. It creates a new horizon against which people can orientate.” — Fast Company

The trustees of London’s garden bridge, including actor Joanna Lumley and the former Labour minister Lord Davies, could have breached their legal duties over the failed project, that cost taxpayers more than £40m, according to a leading lawyer.

The legal opinion comes as pressure mounts for a formal investigation into how the charity behind the abandoned scheme spent so much money without construction work even beginning. — The Guardian

Gwynne demanded Johnson provide evidence for his allegation against Will Hurst, the managing editor of Architects’ Journal who has won several awards for his coverage of the garden bridge, or withdraw them and apologise.

The letter adds to the pressure on Johnson over his role in the troubled story of the planned pedestrian link across the river Thames, which he commissioned and championed as mayor of London, a job he held until May 2016. — The Guardian

The clown king of novelty infrastructure fantasies has once again stolen the limelight with his preposterous plan for a 22-mile bridge across the Channel. [...]

But none of this matters. In a world where Johnson got as far as flushing £37m of public money into the Thames on another fantasy project, the Garden Bridge, a great Channel crossing could easily be conjured into being. — The Guardian

Lord Davies, the chair of the trust, wrote to Khan outlining the reasons why the trust had taken the decision. He said it was “with great regret that trustees have concluded that without mayoral support, the project cannot be delivered”. — The Guardian

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has finally pulled the plug on the controversial plan for a garden bridge across the Thames, announcing that he would not provide the vital financial guarantees needed for construction to begin.

In a letter to the Garden Bridge Trust, the charity leading the much-delayed project, Khan said he was taking the decision because of a continuing shortfall in fundraising for the scheme, and a lack of the necessary land use agreements despite three years of talks. — The Guardian

The garden bridge, proposed to cross the Thames from the South Bank to Temple, is nothing if not a landmark of the post-truth era. It has wrung tens of millions out of the public purse on the basis of deceptions, distortions and facts that proved to be fake. First sold as “a gift to the people of London”, entirely paid for by private sector donations, it is now due to cost a minimum of £60m in public money. Its estimated total cost has gone from £60m to “north of £200 million”. — Rowan Moore

[...] part architect, part furniture designer, part product designer, part researcher, part landscape architect, and part Pied Piper of design, and the things he comes up with manage somehow to be at once charming and brash.

[...] shares not only the Eameses’ determination to be wide-ranging but also their fascination with technology, their interest in communication, and, most important of all, their passionate belief in the meaning of actually making things and in using materials in new ways. — vanityfair.com

Ministers have repeatedly given more public money to London’s planned garden bridge, despite official advice against doing so, and risk losing more than £20m if the controversial project is cancelled, according to a report from the National Audit Office...The Garden Bridge Trust has yet to secure the necessary sub-lease on the area of the South Bank where the bridge will land, the report notes, while the main contractor [is] on standby and construction has been delayed for at least 18 months. — The Guardian

The future of London’s proposed garden bridge has been called into further question after the city’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, halted preparatory work on the structure over fears this could involve more public money being spent.

The Garden Bridge Trust says the bridge from South Bank to Temple, featuring 270 trees and thousands of plants, will be a “tiara” for London, being both an iconic landmark and a vital pedestrian bridge. — The Guardian

When is a garden bridge not a garden bridge? When it’s a bridge garden, according to Allies and Morrison, the Southwark-based architects who have come up with a cheap and cheerful alternative to the eye-wateringly expensive, contractually dubious proposal by Thomas Heatherwick and Joanna Lumley for a floating forest across the Thames. — theguardian.com

A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.

“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said. — theguardian.com