DESIGN AGENDA FOR PARK DE  CEUVEL

Park de Ceuvel covers an area of 4,470m2. In 2012 the site was secured for a 10 year lease from the Municipality of Amsterdam after a group of architects won a tender to turn the site into a regenerative urban oasis (De Ceuvel, 2014).The design envisioned De Ceuvel as a temporary creative zone with offices in retrofitted houseboats on a polluted plot.

The site was initially planned to be remediated mechanically but a lack of funding meant an alternative, less capital-intensive way of developing was required. The contaminants present in the soil included heavy metals, asbestos, mobile agents, volatile chlorinated organic compounds (VOC’s) and mineral oil. Therefore phytoremediation processes were utilized to remediate the contamination below while creative industries worked above.

Flora wasspecially selected with a combination of plants and includes grasses, perennials, short rotation coppice and mature trees for the uptake and degradation of toxins. The project also features elevated platforms of water-cleaning gardens and micro-greenhouses for food production.

The site would be activated further by the café- Café De Ceuvel. The site has high sustainability targets of 100% renewable energy, heating and hot water, 100% water self sufficiency, 100% waste water management, 50-70% nutrient recovery and 10-30% food production on site (Metabolic et. al, 2014).

CONTEXT OF BUIKSLOTERHAM

Buiksloterham is a unique neighbourhood within Amsterdam and has been envisioned as a living lab for Circular, Smart and Biobased development (Metabolic et. al, 2014). It sits within the city of Amsterdam, the largest city in the Netherlands and is located five minutes away from the old centre of Amsterdam across IJ River. Buiksloterham has been treated as a functionally peripheral district because of its industrial past and due to 80% of its empty plots being highly polluted. This pollution is the result of its former use as an industrial zone- including a waste incineration plant and ship yard

monitoring, maintenance & effectiveness

Research on the purification and low-impact biomass production at ‘De Ceuvel’ is conducted by the University of Ghent (Belgium). It serves as a test site and pilot project for graduate and doctoral study programs. A knowledge route through the area shows the results of these studies and informs visitors about the sustainable principles of the organic purification and low-impact biomass production at the park.

The project is the only project in the international precedents that utilises phytoremediation in its truest sense. Its effectiveness is in its tranformation from abandoned lot, to thriving hub of the local community.