In order to give space intensive landscape functions a chance in a dense city, you should order them vertically. Think of farms. Or even campings. Antwerp-based firm Import Export Architecture did so. They created a new, small scaled, vertical type of urban camping. As you can see in the images, the camping is pretty mobile and can therefore be implanted in any city centre that likes to experiment with a new type of camping. It’s a place “where adventurous city wanderers can stay overnight, meet other campers and find a safe shelter with basic designed practical facilities.”
While, for example, my city Amsterdam only builds hotels for the rich these days, the architects of the vertical urban camping notice a contradictionary development. According to them, a new interest in city travelling leads to a rising demand for low-budget accommodations. On one hand, contemporary youth hostels are a limited and poor answer, on the other hand city campings are often located in the outskirts of the urban area.
The initiators of this project, which is called ‘DC/UC I’, aim to explore the opportunities for new types of urban campings. Interesting. Currently they are working on a second, improved design. This ‘UC II’ is part of “a larger global investigation, repurposing existing territories for campings and designing shelters tailored to the urban environment.” This summer the vertical camping can be found in Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of the OutCities project.
—Source: Office for Word and Image, Beton+Garten
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Urban camping – clever idea