Congratulations to the winning ideas to enhance community life. This included creating vegetable gardens and beehives in the neighbourhood. Students created spaces for residents to socialise in recreational activities together, especially those living alone, such as outdoor coffee gatherings, spaces to play, and meeting points.
The Challenge
Students were challenged to redesign the Lange Wemen shopping area with the following prompt:
How can we make Lange Wemen a nice, green, and safe place to live and shop?
Students were asked to consider the four topics below.
- How can we make Lange Wemen a nice place to live? We want to build a place where Hengelo residents want to live and where everyone feels at home and has contact with their neighbours.
- How can we make Lange Wemen a nice place to shop? Think about how you can design the space so that it's fun and easy to run errands, shop and meet others.
- How can we make Lange Wemen a green place? This is not only to make the Lange Wemen more beautiful; by placing greenery you also build a nice place for animals to live. You can also give us ideas on how we should deal with the changing climate. For example, consider how rainwater can easily drain away to avoid flooding, or how greenery provides cooling in the summer.
- How can we make Lange Wemen a safe place? For example, think about how cars, cyclists and pedestrians can safely share space. What do the shrubs and trees do to the feeling of safety? Can people who have difficulty walking also walk around safely? Have you thought about the lighting?
The celebration
Submissions were judged by Alderman Steen, Development Manager Joop Nijenhuis and project developer at VanWonen Rob Dijkman. The project manager of the development site was Martine Briggeman, VanWonen provided guest lectures for students alongside judging.
Student design from Team De Guppies.
About the site
The location in which students built was the Lange Wemen shopping area. This is currently where the Thiemsbrug shopping center and a parking garage are located, but this area is being completely redesigned to have shops with apartments above and residential houses. The redevelopment also wants to make space for greenery and water, with the Drienerbeek river returning as a feature of the landscape. Students were tasked to add their ideas to the first design of the site.
