Noordschote Village Green

‘Gray, dear friend, is all theory. And green the golden tree of life’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

A resident of Noordschote asked me what paving could be laid on her private driveway. ‘Ideally I would like to see cobblestones,’ she said. ‘But I can no longer see cobblestones’. It sounded desperate, but very justified. I knew about the recent redevelopment works of the village centre and had a suspicion that the residents were not so happy with it. My suspicion was confirmed with this statement.

Back at the office, I decided to put our intern-student to drawing out my personal vision for the design of the village centre of Noordschote. Consideration was given to thorough softening and greening, sufficient functional greenery for recreation, a paved market square with the possibility of parking, a greening of the connecting cemetery and the provision of gateway effects between the access roads and the market square with the connecting ‘Village Green’.

The result is a much more humane village centre where people can meet each other in a beautiful and green setting and relax in the shade of the trees during hot summer days.

If Noordschote looked like this, it would no longer evoke the atmosphere of a stone desert but that of a green oasis, amid the vast open polder landscape.

Designing public space is easy as it turns out, if only as a designer has enough empathy for people’s concerns and can recall their deep-human needs.

These photorealistic render images may not be used or distributed without permission from design agency Andy Malengier BV

©Andy Malengier BV