Looking for a nature of the city one will have to consider urban open space in its integrally natural condition. This nature will be short of conventional romanticism. In this context, the garden has an unbroken relevancy as a cultural metaphor for man’s understanding of his environment: uniting diverse aspects of natural representation with the cultural tradition of shaping space. The garden is a site of experimentation. The asphalt surface as a thin ubiquitous layer is the epitome of the urban surface. The proposed asphaltgarden is an attempt at sensitizing this urban skin.