Westergasfabriek Park

[Many thanks to JH for the following comments and photographs, Editor] See note on visiting Westergasfabriek Park and link to website.

Westergasfabriek Park is a wonderful achievement. Still under construction when visited in November 2004, one cannot but be impressed with the physical scale and civic ambition with which an old gas works has been converted into Westergasfabriek Park. In design terms, however, it suffers from what could be construed as typical flaws of late and early 20th century park design: lack of definition of spaces and places to provide a sequence of human experiences which play on the emotions and cater imaginatively for human use. A two dimensional design which looks great on plan can become pattern-making at eye level. And there is not a bench with a backrest in sight. This marks it out as a relative of the Modernist tradition, albeit updated.

The failings of the park may not be Gustafson's fault - she's more an artist than a landscape architect - but one is left gagging for places that enrich the human spirit and are a joy to walk through, sit in and contemplate. The lessons of history seem to have been ignored: where's the equivalent of the Queen Mary Rose Garden, Regent's Park (horticulture to gorge on); the diversity of Central Park, New York (to play, relax, learn, eat, greet, watch or be watched? - it's here somewhere); the idiosyncracy of Great Dixter (enclosed garden spaces dressed with seredipitous plantings); the triumph of Oak Alley, Lousiana (a grand avenue of Live Oaks dressed with Spanish moss); the drama Parc Sceaux (a canal enclosed by cathedral-like poplars); the subtlety of Castle Drogo (space, time and yews cascading down the valley side)? Look to the north of the wonderfully long footpath/cyclepath running the length of the northern boundary and beyond, and you want to experience the disorganised richness allotment gardens just the other side of the water filled ditch.

Having said that, the trademark Gustafson granite detailing, landform and use of water form two organising principles for Westergasfabriek Park - the water axis and the cultural axis which parallel each other, one flowing to the north of the site, the other to the south and touching at the cultural nexus. But another Gustaffson trademark is the lack of a wide enough path to the edge of the water body as at the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain - fortunately this can be easily fixed.

• 3 months ago Tom said

  The best arrangement, for most projects, is to have the owner/user as the client. For public parks the 'owner' is too large a group of people to function as an effective client. So the alternatives are (1) a municipal authority, as 'the elected representatives of the people' can be the client - which usually means a Parks Committee or a Parks Department (2) a User Group (eg a Friends of the Park organization), which is not very likely to be representative.
  It seems from the above that for Westergasfabriek Park the developer was the client. I have not visited the park but having developers function as clients is at too many removes from the historic owner/user client arrangment. If developers are public companies then their legal duty is to 'maximise shareholder value' - in which case a prestige designer is likely to attract the developer more than a design which responds, thoughtfully and creatively, to user needs.

• 3 months ago Robert Holden said

  The park was opened on 7 September 2003 by the Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, and renovation of the old gasworks buildings followed. The park had been turved and planted with advanced nursery stock (quite big) trees after one of the hottest August in living memories. The result was over 90% death of the trees and loss of the turf. The designers clearly had been overruled by the private developers and planting had taken place out of season. If the client had been an informed client (such as the old City of Amsterdam Parks Department) this would not have happened. This is a good example of an ignorant private developer, MAB, insisting on inappropriate action for political or PR reasons. The park was subsequently replanted two years later.
  
  The Westergasfabriek Park in Amsterdam is a 13ha public park built for Stadsdeel Westerpark which is a local borough of Amsterdam (named after the park) with a population of 34,000. The old Wester gasworks had fallen out of use in the 1980s and was a highly contaminated brownfield site. The area is only three km from the centre of Amsterdam and is rather cut off by railway lines. In the 1990s it was decided to develop the site for cultural uses (rather than for office or housing or other form of commercial use) and that the scope would serve all Amsterdam rather than just the local borough. Some of the industrial survived and could be converted for cultural or recreational use and there was a lengthy discussion about the standard of remediation of the toxic materials in the ground. The community brief was set as a prestigious metropolitan development on a contaminated brownfield gasworks site of a 'cultural / art / new media' type, with some 'community' facilities, set in a model eco-park with an art-and-culture emphasis.
  
  In January 2000 an agreement was made by Stadsdeel Westerpark (by then the landowners) to sell the site to a private developer MAB for the equivalent of US$5 million with the undertaking that they would renovate the industrial buildings and construct the park.
  
  The designer of the park was chosen by an international competition held in and Gustafsen Porter of London were selected as landscape architects.