NIO architecten, Profile of the Dutch architecture firm NIO architecten
NIO architecten, Profile of the Dutch architecture firm NIO architecten
Think of Dutch public bus transport and what you see is minimal bus shelters: one small plastic bench and standard 30 by 30 paving stones. If you want to be polite you could call it ‘rational’ or Calvinistic, but actually it is simply poor. No wonder no one takes the bus with pleasure. With the design of the Kerntraject Zuidtangent, we wanted to boost the image of public bus transport by reacting against this common picture. We wanted the steel to dance and the concrete to speak. We wanted to cross technique with flora, Schiphol with the Floriade, super service with supra-identity. This way the Kerntraject Zuidtangent could instantly be given a face. Passengers had to experience that they were making use of something special. The common image of the public transport-passenger, who is standing waiting in a cramped bus shelter, would get a counterpart with style: there is bus transport and there is the Zuidtangent!
Because the bus lane traverses various areas (residential areas, inner city areas, industrial areas, office locations, greenbelts and tunnels) we have conceived all landscape, urban development, architectural and civil facilities for the Zuidtangent as a continuous system to make the image of the Zuidtangent appear as powerful and as clear as possible. With recurring elements – such as coverings, fencings, viaducts, windscreens, sound barriers, tunnels – a system has been designed in which subtle variations are possible. All bus shelter facilities are black and white, apart from the alternating coloured glass roofs (and the bicycle tunnels in the Haarlemmermeer).
The 14 bus stops of the Kerntraject Zuidtangent are partly situated on works of art. Consequently, the concrete constructions can never ever be conceived of as neutral platforms. You simply cannot dissociate the baroque high-tech shelter facilities of the other much-needed civil interventions. Quite some time has been put into adapting the already worked out but not yet designed concrete works of art, in which the cross-section of the viaducts is optimised in order to get a sharper and smaller construction. Within all restrictions, a more elegant road surface profile has been designed. Underneath this profile, expressive solid supports predominate. Therefore, the whole of works of art stands out in a rather fierce way against the flowing coloured glass bus shelter-coverings.
The bended steel fencings, together with the thin prefab concrete panels form the finishing of the edges of the profile of the viaduct. The trick was to avoid the traditional beam/T-bar construction, or at least to make it invisible. This way, what is created in appearance is the desired continuous profile above which the red Zuidtangent-busses skim along at a high speed. The pillars that have been round off at the edges and that have been placed slantwise, literally hold up the bus lane. They are musclemen made of self-condensing concrete. Sometimes, as is the case with the viaduct of the Spaarne hospital, they actually do come out of the ground, as if they give the bus a little push for it to go even faster.
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architecten © 2011