An old police parking garage in Amsterdam has had its day. The building is now used as an office building. Nothing here is reminiscent of a parking garage. The design by Ronald Janssen Architecten impresses with its minimalism, exposed concrete slabs and the view of one of the city’s most important waterways.

An old police parking garage in Amsterdam has had its day. The building is now used as an office building. Nothing here is reminiscent of a parking garage. The design by Ronald Janssen Architecten impresses with its minimalism, exposed concrete slabs and the view of one of the city’s most important waterways.

Aham Vastgoed normally brokers real estate from and in Amsterdam. But when the company itself was looking for a home for its offices, it turned to Ronald Janssen Architecten. The architect from Amsterdam redesigned existing architecture from 1969 for this task. More specifically, an old parking garage belonging to the Dutch police, which also served as storage space for the Stadgenoot social housing association. However, the conversion as a sustainable solution is only one aspect of the design. It draws another quality from the location. The building is located directly on the Singelgracht waterway, which encircles the entire center of the Dutch capital. And it was precisely this proximity to the water and the resulting quality of stay that the architects wanted to exploit for their conversion.

Floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors with wooden frames, concrete columns and prefabricated façades made of exposed aggregate concrete divide the water-facing side of the building evenly into five sections. Two of these five sections also reveal the heart of the architecture from the outside – the large, high office space. From here, employees not only have direct access to the terrace on the canal, but also to meeting rooms, function rooms and lounges, including a kitchenette. While the interior spaces are oriented towards the waterway, Ronald Janssen Architects positioned the entrance and parking spaces towards the inner courtyard. A solid wooden door leads to the entrance area, which is ultimately just a long corridor with a concealed checkroom. It connects the mixed-use sanitary room with the open-plan office and a medium-sized meeting room.

Photo: Sebastian van Damme, Plans: Ronald Janssen Architecten

The materials and colors used by Ronald Janssen Architecten follow the motto “less is more”. The existing structure was cleaned, the walls painted light and the ceiling dark. The dark gray carpet connects the rooms. Windows, doors and cladding are made of iroko wood. The exposed aggregate concrete panels on the façade also pick up on the warm wood color. The colorful icing on the cake is green and is literally on top: the flat roof is greened with moss.

A building in which the color green is the main protagonist is located on the school campus of Naters in the Swiss canton of Valais – the learning villa by Office Oblique.

Although it is a new building, asp architects have created a central component for the energy supply of a district with their parking garage in Stuttgart. And it’s green too: Neckarpark Stuttgart parking garage.

Everything about the 2019 garden show year

The first garden shows of 2019 opened their doors just in time for the spring-like Easter weekend. In addition to the Federal Garden Show in Heilbronn, this year there were also state garden shows in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Saxony and Upper Austria.

Heilbronn used the BUGA event (April 17 to October 6, 2019) to renew itself from the inside out on a 40-hectare area in the immediate vicinity of the train station. Situated on an island between the Neckar Canal and the Altneckar, the isolated site had been used as an industrial and commercial location and freight station for over 100 years and had long disappeared from the consciousness of the people of Heilbronn. Following the relocation of a section of the B39 federal highway and the extensive removal of explosives and contaminated sites, the future Neckarbogen district will eventually provide living space for 3,500 people and 1,000 jobs in the coming years. The first three completed building plots were already integrated into the garden show as an “urban exhibition”.

In order to create a sustainable living space worth living in for the people of Heilbronn, the city took a new approach to neighborhood development (read the article by Thomas Armonat in G+L 4/2019). A colourful and diverse mix of usage concepts, buildings and residents, along with reduced car traffic, short distances and a modern energy supply, should make the neighbourhoods flexible for future adaptations to changing living conditions.

Pictures: Federal Garden Show Heilbronn 2019 GmbH

Garden shows 2019: experiencing nature in the middle of the city

The concept of the Berlin landscape architects from sinai played a key role in the quality of life of the Neckarbogen. They created four landscape ribbons from the existing patchwork of landscapes. As a result, visitors pass urban cores at the raft harbor with nine-storey buildings and within 15 minutes find themselves at Karlssee lake, which has been landscaped with reed zones. This also serves as a retention basin and filter for rainwater from the neighborhood.

At the same time, a spectacular landscape structure was created towards the Neckar canal. Since then, a cliff up to twelve meters high has shielded noise from the industrial Neckar Canal. Towards the garden show grounds, the shotcrete surface, which is reminiscent of the rocky edges of the surrounding countryside, conceals a vertical playground with climbing and sliding facilities. Gabions filled with local natural stone also border the sides as a compensatory measure for the habitats of lizards and other animals. With the new riverbank design and a 600-metre-long wooden footbridge in the Neckaruferpark, the landscape architects are not only bringing the river back into people’s consciousness, but also enabling them to experience nature in an impressive way – right in the middle of the city!

You can read a detailed article on the BUGA Heilbronn concept in G+L 7/2019.

The concept for the Brandenburg State Garden Show in Wittstock an der Dosse (April 18 to October 6, 2019) also comes from sinai. The town of 15,000 inhabitants is located in the Prignitz region between the Elbe and Müritz rivers. In the south, the 13.5-hectare garden show grounds form a semicircle around the historic brick ring wall of the well-preserved medieval town. To the west of the city wall, the River Glinze flows through the listed Friedrich Ebert Park dating from 1925 with its old trees. To the east, a newly designed and ecologically improved oxbow of the Dosse – the Dossebogen – borders the park on the Bleichwall, which begins at the foot of the former Bischofsburg. There, between an existing row of lime trees with an accompanying promenade and the city wall as a historical backdrop, the landscape architects staged an open meadow space. The “Bleichgärten”, meanwhile, are based on the former commons and, as citizens’ gardens, invite communal appropriation.

Pictures: State Garden Show Wittstock/Dosse 2019

Frankenberg in Saxony is just ten minutes from Chemnitz. Dresden can be reached in half an hour, Leipzig in three quarters of an hour. The attractive location for commuters is a welcome ray of hope in the structural change for the once industrial community of 16,000 inhabitants. As part of the Saxon State Garden Show in Frankenberg, Berlin-based landscape architects Weidinger Landschaftsarchitekten designed two differently characterized parts of the site: a six-hectare, robust leisure park on the Zschopau floodplain to the west of the town center and the landscaped, almost five-hectare valley along the meandering Mühlbach stream to the east.

The heart of the park on the Zschopau is the so-called Zeit-Werk-Stadt, an experience museum for urban and industrial history. To the north of it, a bridge by Sauerzapfe Architekten known as the “snake” spans the B 169 federal road and the Zschopau for pedestrians and cyclists and now connects higher-level cycle paths. Visitors can reach the valley, which the Mühlbach stream has cut around 15 to 20 meters deep, via the town center. The city has added flood protection and ecological water restoration to the wild and romantic atmosphere there. Thanks to a new pedestrian underpass and newly laid out footpaths and cycle paths, many people will in future pass through the Mühlgraben located above the park, which the landscape architects have restored to its historical course as an open channel.

In Baden-Württemberg, 16 municipalities in the Rems Valley, east of Stuttgart, have joined forces to create an atypical state garden show: from the source of the Rems in Essingen via Schwäbisch Gmünd, Schorndorf and Waiblingen to the mouth of the river Neckar near Remseck. They are all located in the Rems Landscape Park, for which the Planstatt Senner office from Überlingen originally worked together with the municipalities on the topics of tourism, cultural landscape and settlement areas. The focus was on improving the quality of life along the river and closing the gaps in the accompanying cycle path network. The good cooperation between the municipalities subsequently led to the idea of hosting a joint Remstal Garden Show in 2019 (May 10 to October 20, 2019).

In addition to the “16 Stations” architectural project, for which each municipality developed a landmark, Schorndorf and Schwäbisch Gmünd – where a state garden show was held as recently as 2014 – also hosted adventure gardens that were open to the public. In Schorndorf, for example, the Munich-based firm Lohrer.Hochrein gave the castle park and the town park a contemporary look. They presented the castle on an open lawn. Meanwhile, a square with water fountains rising from the ground was created at the intersection of the path axes. In the city park, on the other hand, densely planted edges and entrances carved out of them now define the space traversed by a circular path. Flattened bank areas towards the lake even allow visitors to lie down on the grass by the water.

Instead of a large-scale garden show like the one in Rems Valley, the Bavarian municipality of Wassertrüdingen, located halfway between Nuremberg and Ulm, organized a so-called Small State Garden Show (24 May to 8 September 2019). The Berlin-based Planorama office designed two landscaped parks on 13 hectares: the Wörnitzpark to the south of the town center and the Klingenweiherpark to the north. Both are also connected by a path through the city center. Between the Baudenhardt recreation area in the north of the city and the Oettinger Forst forest in the south, a green belt now also extends the urban area. This has also created ecological retreats and recreational areas for residents in the floodplain landscape of the Wörnitz.

Along the Klingenweiher ponds in the north, the landscape architects also added footbridges, pathways and vantage points to the area, known as the Weihersteig. Another architectural highlight is a golden platform that juts out into the water. The hill of a former landfill site has also been turned into a viewing point. To the south, the Wörnitzpark links the town center to the adjacent floodplain landscape. Seating steps border the Mühlweiher pond not far from the old town wall. A gap in the wall at the Entengraben is now closed by a metal lattice construction as a reminder.

Close to the Czech border, the Upper Austrian municipality of Aigen-Schlägl in the Mühlviertel region hosted a regional garden show (May 17 to October 13, 2019), which was dedicated firstly to the themes of conscious living and secondly to the use of resources. For the garden show, the municipality also cooperated with the Schlägl Premonstratensian Abbey, which has been in existence for 800 years, and the Schlägl Organic School, both of which are located on the 15-hectare site. The concept – a circular path linking the gardens and fields of the organic school, the new garden and leisure area for the town and the monastery along with the brewery and the founder’s garden – was also created by the Berlin office ST raum a.

A good fit for the organic cycle, which on the one hand explains to visitors how organic food gets onto their plates and on the other hand addresses how we want to design gardens and agriculture in the future. One of the biggest lasting attractions for Schlägl residents will be the newly created “Aigen-Schlägler Terraces”. There are not only new picnic and barbecue areas for residents, but also community gardens. In addition, the gardens in the Sacred Grove are intended to bring visitors closer to the themes of Christianity, peace and finding oneself. Narrow side paths branch off from the circular route, allowing visitors to discover small, enchanted or special places.

Do you remember the garden shows three years ago? If not, you can also find a review of the 2016 shows here.