text and graphics: Aleksandra Wróbel,
student at the Faculty of Architecture, Technische Universiteit Delft
reading time: around 10 min
The city is constantly processed by social, political and commercial moves which gradually overlay on its urban fabric. They shape it as a living organism, they bring it a constant change of demolition and a reconstruction which happen on different layers and touch material and immaterial substances. Some of them have the power to adapt the existing urban structure to emerging needs, so throughout the years, the city becomes a silent patchwork of projects imprinted onto its fabric. Changes which manifest themselves in the built form are very often exposed on the pedestal when regarded as constituting a part of the image of the city or forgotten when their existence is uncomfortable and problematic. Very often these two notions exist in a single project – a praised, glossy front part and an accidental and shaming backside, which is necessary to serve the former, desirable one. They exist in mutual exclusion, both visual and functional. The backside exists purely because of its function, and therefore, very little attention is paid to the relation it has with the urban fabric.
The parking lot located on the rooftop of the Molenpoort shopping mall in Nijmegen represents such a phenomenon. It sits awkwardly in the middle of the urban block as if it filled a gap which had existed there, but in fact, it destroyed what was there to find its place. It is a backside of the mall – a purely functional space which in itself was aimed not to attract any attention. However, by underestimating the value of its physical relationship with the existing surrounding the parking left its marginal role and started to dictate the new order of the place. It introduced a public space to the back sides of residential buildings and therefore suddenly changed their function from a private oasis to a public stage. They were created in a very subtle manner, with tangible, ordinary elements to give a hideout for the residents, and suddenly they became exposed -the traditional division into a public front, and a private backyard has been demolished. Planned as a mere service space, the parking became a bold intervention which manifests its superiority over what has existed here for a hundred years. Its proximity to the church’s apse trivialized the sphere of the unattainable sacrum and made it almost a tangible experience.
The parking is inevitably working as an independent unit which defines itself by the contrast with the surroundings and its uncompromising character. It brought the tension to the place, and by its contrast, it created the upper, surrealistic city of Nijmegen.
