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(Car)Pool

Project specification: Circulair design
Client: Province South Holland, TU Delft Urbanism and Landscape Engineering
Description: A circular plan as a symbiosis between technology and design
Role: Designer
Team: Jannine de Jong, Giovanni Mercatelli, Lola Herrera-Ximenez

In this project we take the carpool literally: A carpool is a space for parking vehicles, a place for water adaptation and a place for washing cars: A circular water machine

Storm water peaks, increased with the climate change, result in flooding and problems in public health and safety. Especially rainfall in paved areas is polluted and creates the most problems. Hereby, parking spaces play a key role. This fits the vision as ‘Sponge city’ of the municipality of Rotterdam. A sponge absorbs water quickly, can retain it for a long period and returns it if the soil needs it. The parking areas account for 30-60% of the surface of our cities. This scape has become the main scape in our immediate living environment: they are places of emission concentration. and storm water flooding; They are places of heat, drought and lack of biodiversity; Finally, they are places of monotonous functionality.

The word POOL refers to a natural small area of still water. Pools can occur by heavy rainfall and are mostly temporary. In this project, we create a ‘carpool’; not as activity to share vehicles, but as new typology of space. We want to re-imagine parking space as a water machine. A space where the storm water is harvested, cleaned, and re-used for neighborhood purposes. Therefore, we take the word literally: A carpool is a space for parking vehicles, a place for water adaptation and a place for washing cars: A circular water machine. This will be done by changing the parking landscape: increasing the pave inclination, adding a water square, a biofiltration system, water tank and a pump.Our place for this study is a parking lot around 3000 m2 in Vreewijk neighborhood in Rotterdam South. This area, close by landmarks as Ahoy and the shopping centre Zuidplein deals badly with water management and has a lot of parking spaces. Thereby, this parking lot a good example to start with and has potential to create a bigger circular water treatment network with surrounding streets and parking spaces.