A productive park built with recycled materials around OostCampus (the City Hall and Civic centre of Oostkamp, Belgium, also designed by our office). Park activities, cycle and pedestrian lanes coexist in harmony with yards for storage and the management of construction material.
photo: Stijn Bollaert
Description.
The city’s building materials are arranged around the yard on neat piles, sand, gravel, cobblestones, etc, separated by Lego blocks propped against a retaining wall which supports the bicycle lane and pedestrian path. Passers by will be tempted to stop for a minute and watch the trucks and the bulldozers engaging in the choreography of their daily work.
photo: Miguel de Guzmán
A recycled fence, reclaimed form the former Coca-Cola factory, serves as see-trough enclosure, allowing for climber plants to grow on certain places.
Water harvesting is carried out in two steps: the roof of the main building provides clean water for all the toilets, the workshops, and the vehicle cleaning point. This adds to the water collected in the plot, which may contain some sand, but is perfect to fill the street-cleaning truck tanks, which add to the choreography.
A sort of wadi collects excess rain water, which will then filter slowly into the system. This wadi becomes a water feature in the park.
The salt which is used in winter to melt the snow in the streets needs to be stored in a dry, protected space. A cubicle is built for this purpose, and a mountain rises on top of it. The earth thus used comes from the city controlled earth dump, and is the excess balance from the earthworks in local building sites in the last few years.
The salt cubicle also serves as foundation for a white, slender wind generator, which will crown the hill top, while providing electricity to the Campus and the neighbours.
Lines of trees are placed at a lower level, slowing down the wind near the ground, which increases the speed at the level of the windmill. This also improves the experience for cyclist along the bicycle lane, which links the complex with the centre, the school, a green corridor and other major destinations in the area.
One of the trees on these alignments is artificial; it is the tall mast of a GSM station.
Two "monuments" mark the entrance to the park. These are built with used bottle crates, in plastic, which will be painted regularly as colour pixels by the children in the local school. Space Invaders are already a favourite, and so are the Pac-man ghosts.
Participation workshops.
The project had been first publicly presented on Dec. 1st 2009 in De Valkaart, Beukenpark, under the auspices of the Flemish Government’s Landscape Agency, VLM.
Residents, partners and neighbouring businesses participated in a workshop to evaluate the first draft of the project, contribute with their ideas and express their concerns and interests.
The session was also attended by partner Cities and Universities of the European program Making Places Profitable MP4, which will finance 50% of the budget.
On the following day the workshop continued at VLM’s headquarters in Bruges, where representatives from Sheffield, Edinburgh (UK), Gothenburg (S), Emmen (NL), Copenhagen (DK) and Hamburg (D) contributed with ideas and expertise for both the design and the implementation methods.
Construction.
On 16 December 2010 the City Council approved our final design. The procurement process is completed and the contract was awarded on the 1st of August 2011 to CEI-De Meyer. The works started in October 2011 and were inaugurated in June 2012. The allocated cost was 914,660 euros plus VAT.
A European MP4 Interreg Project, developed with ELD Partnership (Antwerp) and VLM (the Flemish Government Landscape Agency)
photo: Stijn BollaertDescription.
The city’s building materials are arranged around the yard on neat piles, sand, gravel, cobblestones, etc, separated by Lego blocks propped against a retaining wall which supports the bicycle lane and pedestrian path. Passers by will be tempted to stop for a minute and watch the trucks and the bulldozers engaging in the choreography of their daily work.
photo: Miguel de GuzmánA recycled fence, reclaimed form the former Coca-Cola factory, serves as see-trough enclosure, allowing for climber plants to grow on certain places.
Water harvesting is carried out in two steps: the roof of the main building provides clean water for all the toilets, the workshops, and the vehicle cleaning point. This adds to the water collected in the plot, which may contain some sand, but is perfect to fill the street-cleaning truck tanks, which add to the choreography.
A sort of wadi collects excess rain water, which will then filter slowly into the system. This wadi becomes a water feature in the park.
The salt which is used in winter to melt the snow in the streets needs to be stored in a dry, protected space. A cubicle is built for this purpose, and a mountain rises on top of it. The earth thus used comes from the city controlled earth dump, and is the excess balance from the earthworks in local building sites in the last few years.
The salt cubicle also serves as foundation for a white, slender wind generator, which will crown the hill top, while providing electricity to the Campus and the neighbours.
Lines of trees are placed at a lower level, slowing down the wind near the ground, which increases the speed at the level of the windmill. This also improves the experience for cyclist along the bicycle lane, which links the complex with the centre, the school, a green corridor and other major destinations in the area.
One of the trees on these alignments is artificial; it is the tall mast of a GSM station.
Two "monuments" mark the entrance to the park. These are built with used bottle crates, in plastic, which will be painted regularly as colour pixels by the children in the local school. Space Invaders are already a favourite, and so are the Pac-man ghosts.
Participation workshops.
The project had been first publicly presented on Dec. 1st 2009 in De Valkaart, Beukenpark, under the auspices of the Flemish Government’s Landscape Agency, VLM.
Residents, partners and neighbouring businesses participated in a workshop to evaluate the first draft of the project, contribute with their ideas and express their concerns and interests.
The session was also attended by partner Cities and Universities of the European program Making Places Profitable MP4, which will finance 50% of the budget.
On the following day the workshop continued at VLM’s headquarters in Bruges, where representatives from Sheffield, Edinburgh (UK), Gothenburg (S), Emmen (NL), Copenhagen (DK) and Hamburg (D) contributed with ideas and expertise for both the design and the implementation methods.
Construction.
On 16 December 2010 the City Council approved our final design. The procurement process is completed and the contract was awarded on the 1st of August 2011 to CEI-De Meyer. The works started in October 2011 and were inaugurated in June 2012. The allocated cost was 914,660 euros plus VAT.
A European MP4 Interreg Project, developed with ELD Partnership (Antwerp) and VLM (the Flemish Government Landscape Agency)
