For reasons I'm not quite able to grasp, there exists such thing as a parking lot. The one in this picture sits right in the middle of the city of Bergen, next to the city hall. The only explanation I can think of for its still being there, must be that the city planners and politicians of Bergen work right next to it, and want to drive their cars to work.
In our new project in school, we're supposed to design residential complex of sorts, using an interesting/problematic area as our site. My group chose this spot, and fortunately, all is not trouble and cars and office palaces from the seventies.
Approaching the site from below, one can walk through a narrow and low-ceilinged passage, arriving in the middle of a beautiful courtyard with a large maple tree.
As of now, the building is used as office space and no one is using the courtyard, especially not in the evening. Maybe our new design could do something about that?
PATTERN 22, NINE PER CENT PARKING
ReplyDelete"Very simply‹when the area devoted to parking is too great, it destroys the land.
Therefore:
Do not allow more than 9 per cent of the land in any given area to be used for parking. In order to prevent the "bunching" of parking in huge neglected areas, it is necessary for a town or a community to subdivide its land into "parking zones" no larger than 10 acres each and to apply the same rule in each zone."
See:
http://vasarhelyi.eu/books/A_pattern_language_book/apl22/apl22.htm