As I was driving to work the other day, I started daydreaming (when I get so consumed in thought that I forget driving the last 5 miles…scary but true) about how cool it would be to car pool…and then I think…no, better yet, it would be VERY cool to take a high speed train – a rail system that could start in downtown Omaha and stretch west on Dodge until you hit Lincoln. Now THAT would be awesome. Not only would you be able to read a book, you could bang out a proposal, or eat breakfast while catching up on the phone with Dad, or sleep. Rather than get caught up in the crazy, stress ridden insanity of driving in morning rush hour.
You might ask at this moment, what does this have to do with design? Where am i going with this?
Well, after daydreaming about Omaha’s first high speed rail system, I found myself moving overseas in thought – to a place called the Eastern Docklands. http://www.easterndocklands.com/
A place in Amsterdam that used to be an old grungy wasteland of deserted shipyards. Something where architects saw a diamond in the rough, and got together with large groups of architects, designers and artists to create a neighborhoods of row houses along the canals (old docks) that allowed, as one of its many perks, its inhabitants to KAYAK to their jobs across the bay in the downtown area.
Docklands Rowhouses
Now THAT sounds like my kind of commute! In the warmer months at least. We had a chance to see this neighborhood when visiting Amsterdam a couple of years back, and I fell in love with the design of the housing – very funky, modern, green (eco), eclectic and ALL very different from each other in style.
The architects commissioned artists to design all of the bridges arching over the canals – some were crazy sculptures let alone functioning paths across water; and some were so insane in the steepness or angles, that there is no way this would ever pass codes in America…which of course, made it even cooler.
(below i am trying to make my way up a super steep bridge and wondering why on earth I stopped using the stair climber at the gym…)
This was a place that I fell for in a quick second…the amazing design, the sculptures that were functioning bridges, the fact that you can have a commute in a kayak, and the eco materials that many of these places used.
It is truly a designer’s dream to live in such a community and I can only hope that we bring an ounce of their ideas to the design of any future eco developments. Heck, I still dream about it.
Until we meet again Docklands, or until Bozell opens an office in Amsterdam, I will be daydreaming of commutes where all i hear are sea gulls above my head, and the sound of splashing water.
