Daniel Baerlecken & Judith Reitz
URBAN JAM SESSION. RWTH Aachen (Germany)
Giedion has discovered within the Parkways around New York an architecture of movement on an urban scale. For him driving on a Parkway is the unobstructed freedom of movement, a feeling like sliding swiftly on skies through untouched snow.
UJS deals with mobility in an urban context – an urban Parkway, a Mega-Drive-In in the inner-city of Boston, which has been separated by the plannings of the “Autostadt”. A 10-lane Highway has been replaced by an underground Highway, the Air-rights above the second Highway are on sale right now.
190000 cars are driving every day on this Highway and are daily causing 12 hours delay. Giedions dream comes here to an end. Instead of sliding swiftly above gently landscapes, there is senseless waiting in the car.
We tried to generate a urban structure, which is connecting city and traffic and re-interpreting the unobstructed freedom of movement.
Our project is layered into five levels with different speeds and length of stay.
1. If the speed of traffic gets slower than 12 mph, the Highway gets transformed into a temporary market-zone by mobile Drive-Through-Terminals.
2. Length of stay up to 58 secs. At five points there is the possibility of entering spiral drive-ups. The driver can either pass through, receive his order at an interface and drive into the city or he is able to change into a peoplemover.
3. The Drive-in-loop - length of stay of 60 secs+ - is a bazarlevel consisting of horizontal and vertical market-zones.
4. The public knots are interfaces between pedestrian and car traffic, containing programms with a length of stay of 1,5 hours+ - a public bath, a cinema, a conference centre, a theatre and an aquarium.
5. The fifth level interweaves the loop with blocks of offices and housing.
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