Parking garages as luna park

• Program
  Recreation transferium
• Client
  Prix de Rome Architecture
• Team
  Theo Hauben
  Marco Vermeulen
  Michel van der Velden
  Frank Stahl
  Armand Dols
  
• Collaboration
  A2Studio (renderings)
• Location
  Halfweg, CSM-area
• Area
  111000 m2
• Date
  2001-03-31

(2nd prize, Prix de Rome 2001, Architecture)

Near the CSM site in Halfweg the derailed asphalt of the N200 is rolled up into a luna park comprising parking garages. The various parking frequencies embrace each of the sports facilities belonging to a specific transport modality. The design of the parking structure creates conditions for the attachment of hidden programs such as a pop centre or a events park. The ground level is declared bankrupt and released for all forms of mud recreation. Recreational routes lead along the garages and have parallel links. Every conceivable transfer between the various means of transport is possible in this recreation transferium. The system can be deployed for the public access of Amsterdam and Haarlem, whereby the recreation facilities increase the appeal and the length of stay. Just as in the days of the barge canal, when the waiting rooms in Halfweg were transformed into
drinking rooms so, too, the transfer station can become a destination in its own right. Argued the other way around, the accessibility of the Spaarnwoude recreation area is optimal thanks to this subsidised parking facility. With the direct link of the linear, through roads to the loop-shaped, recreational paths the recreation transferium functions as an interface between two intersecting landscapes here. The controversial relationship
between the nostalgic landscape of the dividing buffer zone and the modern landscape of the connecting infrastructure is negated