New Green Cross

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Redesign for the Green Cross park, community center

The Hague, Netherlands

2020

Individual | MSc3/4 Public Building Studio | TU Delft

Henk Bultstra, Nathalie de Vries, Jelke Fokkinga​

external critic: Nico Tillie, Jaap van Heest 

The abundant green areas in The Hague Zuid-West lack certain qualities in order to stimulate social cohesion and wellbeing in the district. This public spaces - well over the city’s average - are largely concentrated in a large central park called the Green Cross. A mapping of the existing functions and vegetation revealed that the park is mainly used for sport activities and allotment gardens, and offers limited uses for the general public. Moreover, the overabundance of grass fields, the fragmented forest area and limited wetlands have a negative impact on biodiversity and carbon sequestration.  

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The assignment was to redesign the park, creating a new public knot by merging the landscape with public transport, sport and culture functions. I moved away from conventional design principles and adopted a series of guiding principles from “Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning” by Dramstad, Olson and Forman, mainly the intersection effect, connectivity, species movement, soft edge and boundary.