HEERLEN ROOFSCAPE ARCHIPELAGO

Blindspots: who can say what opportunities will reveal themselves?

The Heerlen Rooftop Project ‘Heerlen Roofscape Archipelago’ is designed by Mattijs Brands, Basil Descheemaeker and Jérome Kockerols.

Heerlen Roofscape Archipelago formulates a resilient, open-ended strategy for the public conquest of the city’s rooftops. The project’s core consists of three rooftops with a heightened potential to host public activities: the SCHUNCK Glaspaleis, the H&M-building and the Putgraaf parking garage. The specific spatial qualities of each roof are amplified by the addition of one or two distinct architectural objects: a water-capturing greenhouse, a panorama platform and modular slide, and a folded metal canopy.

These new public roofscapes do not impose one specific way of being occupied. They are open, versatile spaces that invite appropriation by their users. Moreover, each object is made out of materials that can be re-used throughout the city after the end of the festival. The public rooftops are complemented by an archipelago of smaller interventions on private roofs, the result of an alliance between collective and individual initiative. Over time, an archipelago of activated roofscapes will appear, its final form impossible to predict.

SCHUNCK cannot guarantee the correctness of content and expression. The participants themselves are responsible for their texts.