FELIXX SELECTED FOR FUTURE-PROOF DESIGN OF THE EUROPAWEG

Commissioned by the municipality of Haarlem, Felixx was chosen to realize a landscape street design for the Europaweg in collaboration with the consultants of Antea Group. The road is located on the south side of the historic city centre, in the pre-war district of Schalkwijk. The municipality of Haarlem shows a high ambition to transform the area into a diverse urban living environment. With the Europaweg zone and adjacent area developments, this is given substance with a new place in the city where living, working, care, accommodation and relaxation come together.   City Street Europaweg From a green polder with a recognizable waterway, to a post-war district with an outdoor space dominated by mobility today: as a remnant of modernist urban expansions, the layout of the Europaweg in Haarlem is harsh, and the terrain of the adjacent areas lacks any grandeur. The opportunity to improve the quality of the stay lies in rethinking the mobility challenge and the dominant position of the car in the area. Felixx sees the assignment as a special opportunity to focus on the landscape and public space as a catalyst for the further development of the Europaweg-zone. “With City Street Europaweg we design for people. It is important that we start seeing public space again as 'a shared space', a place for people instead of functional connections. It is not based on a one-dimensional perspective on the street, but a multidimensional design method is applied, wherein different aspects together create the public space.” Europaea Arboretum Infrastructure takes up a lot of space for mobility, but at the same time these major mobility carriers fulfill a double function as an ecological green structure. Nevertheless, these green structure carriers have a limited ecological value, because they often consist of avenues of trees of one type. Due to increasing disease pressure among several species, gaps are appearing in the green structures or they are disappearing completely from the cityscape. In addition, the climate is changing and we are regularly confronted with extreme peak showers, longer periods of drought and sustained periods of high temperatures. These aspects require a different approach to the landscaping and design of our streets. Current situation Europaweg, Haarlem. Photo: Felixx Landscape Architects and Planners, 2023  The multidimensional and climate-adaptive layout of the Europaweg and the planting of a diverse range of disease-resistant trees – which are also more resistant to changing climate conditions – create a future-proof and robust ecologically valuable green structure. With the addition of different species of trees from all over Europe, a new biodiverse linear arboretum is created. Europaea Arboretum will be a future-proof identity carrier within the Europaweg-zone that is not only attractive to direct users, but also to residents of surrounding neighborhoods.