With the arrival of the Ghent circulation plan, a number of streets in the inner city were cut and opportunities were taken to create new public space. BUUR was appointed as designer to visualize the possibilities when the car is given a less prominent place in the city, in which way the places can be temporarily arranged and to guide the realization. The City of Ghent set two preconditions for any kind of temporary layout: everything must be realized above ground level and the elements must be movable. After all, the time perspective is 5 to 10 years.
The places created by the so-called ‘snips’ are totally different in scale and context. Using a matrix, the various locations and their conditions were mapped. This showed that a context-bound design per location would be less recognizable. The design was therefore constructed with ensembles of color planes and urban furniture that were repeated at each location: an ‘urban carpet’ for residential spaces with modular benches and greenery, a ‘mikado’ of colored stripes for new public spaces where there are many intersecting movements, and transverse color planes and flagpoles for the announcement of a ‘snip’.
Through thorough design research, BUUR designed a pallet of markings, objects and elements that make the ‘snips’ recognizable. At the same time, the new possibilities for each of the spaces are made tangible. A number of objects are functional in nature (safety, recognizability, bicycles), other objects increase the quality of stay (terraces, benches, greenery).
