Make room!
"Mach mal Platz" is a cooperation project of students and employees of the Chair and Institute of Urban Design, the student initiative Uni.Urban.Mobil. e.V. and the Akademie für Handwerksdesign Gut Rosenberg of the Aachen Chamber of Crafts. For more than two years, the cooperation team explored the potential of the Talbot parking lot on the RWTH Aachen University Campus Mitte. This resulted in temporary and long-term visions for a transformation of the sealed inner-city area. The students' designs focus on a multifunctional use of the parking lot. They show how parking as well as staying are possible through time-shifted uses in the course of the day, week and year, which can be spontaneously adapted as needed. A new passageway for bicycles and pedestrians creates a spatial connection to the adjacent neighborhoods. In addition, the urban climate and the protection of the ecosystem in the city center are improved by large-scale drainage, the integration of retention areas and rainwater collection tanks anchored in the ground. This also convinced the jury in the state competition "Zukunft Stadtraum" (Future Urban Space), which was organized by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Municipal Affairs, Building and Equality of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. "Mach mal Platz!" received awards in both rounds of the competition.
To conclude the project, the Talbot parking lot was temporarily repurposed from October 01 to 16, 2022. For two weeks, the project team took an experimental approach to the site and its structures, declaring twelve parking spaces as a car-free staging area. Through minimal design changes and artistic interventions on the Talbot parking lot, possible future designs of its transformation were outlined.
The background to the project is the "Initiative Urbaner Campus Mitte", which was launched in 2019 by the Chair and Institute of Urban Design at RWTH Aachen University, among others. The focus of the initiative is the urban qualification of the inner-city campus, also in connection with the old town. Since 2019, visions for the future and ideas have been developed and discussed within teaching and research.
Partners of the initiative
- Chair and Institute for Urban Design RWTH Aachen University
- Uni.Urban.Mobil.e.V.
- Academy for Craft Design Gut Rosenberg of the Chamber of Crafts Aachen
Term
2021 until 2022
Funding source
Self-initiative