Dutch Design Fashion Architecture
februari 24, 2009
The light of the car alarm is softly flashing, my feet are tucked away in the trunk. I’m lying in a comfy bed in my own car. I didn’t know this day would end up like this. I only drove here. I checked in to the Autohotel.
Autohotel is an experiment by Dutch urbanist Evelien de Munck Mortier. She wants people to experience the parking lot.
“You think of parkings as mostly boring, nothing seems to happen, but there must be something around or there wouldn’t be a place to stop. What’s here to explore and appreciate? I am interested to see how the places you know and use, meet this fluid world of highways, parkings and roadside restaurants. The places in between stop and go.“ She might be right in finding a new system of space. Thinking of parking lots, there’s families who have to pee or try to tire their children down on a few meters of grass verge for peaceful traveling. Two colleagues of the national car help service that meet during their work hours for a coffee, sex workers and sex wanters cruising around. Truck drivers practically live on parking lots. For who stops, listens and sees, there’s a whole new world happening at the car park.
The Autohotel is an autarkic hotel. It picks a plot, sets it’s mobile lobby, rooms and reception. Energy is generated through solar panels. Water and sewer are closed systems that travel along. The kitchen’s chef is specialised in raw food to make minimum use of resources. Being self-sufficient is idealistic, but also fast. The morning after a night between arriving and leaving there is no trace left.
The reception is found following the sound of a car radio built in a small cabinet situated outside a tiny caravan. Inside Evelien hands out a vase clipped out of orange plastic adhesive sheet
with a roadside flower for me to stick to my window. In fact, all apparel is car related. The mirror in the toilet room is put together of several rear view mirrors, lighted by car front lights built into the wall. Water comes out of the white plastic reservoirs for screenwash in all different kind of shapes from various cars.
The night porter just brought a warm water bottle for cold feet. My car has been prepped with a thick mattress, car shaped sweets on the pillow, bio cotton towels and an eye mask hanging from the rear view mirror. This hotel experience is so emphatically thought through that I feel the obligatory bible must be lying in my glove compartment. Light is peeping through holes in the car cover that holds my room number 3. Outside there’s soft voices of people preparing for bed, before I fall asleep. Who would suspect a parking lot at night can be very comforting?
Via: Artichoke magazine
Photo: Kees Kortmulder
Download article here
Autohotel is an experiment by Dutch urbanist Evelien de Munck Mortier. She wants people to experience the parking lot.
“You think of parkings as mostly boring, nothing seems to happen, but there must be something around or there wouldn’t be a place to stop. What’s here to explore and appreciate? I am interested to see how the places you know and use, meet this fluid world of highways, parkings and roadside restaurants. The places in between stop and go.“ She might be right in finding a new system of space. Thinking of parking lots, there’s families who have to pee or try to tire their children down on a few meters of grass verge for peaceful traveling. Two colleagues of the national car help service that meet during their work hours for a coffee, sex workers and sex wanters cruising around. Truck drivers practically live on parking lots. For who stops, listens and sees, there’s a whole new world happening at the car park.
The Autohotel is an autarkic hotel. It picks a plot, sets it’s mobile lobby, rooms and reception. Energy is generated through solar panels. Water and sewer are closed systems that travel along. The kitchen’s chef is specialised in raw food to make minimum use of resources. Being self-sufficient is idealistic, but also fast. The morning after a night between arriving and leaving there is no trace left.
The reception is found following the sound of a car radio built in a small cabinet situated outside a tiny caravan. Inside Evelien hands out a vase clipped out of orange plastic adhesive sheet
with a roadside flower for me to stick to my window. In fact, all apparel is car related. The mirror in the toilet room is put together of several rear view mirrors, lighted by car front lights built into the wall. Water comes out of the white plastic reservoirs for screenwash in all different kind of shapes from various cars.
The night porter just brought a warm water bottle for cold feet. My car has been prepped with a thick mattress, car shaped sweets on the pillow, bio cotton towels and an eye mask hanging from the rear view mirror. This hotel experience is so emphatically thought through that I feel the obligatory bible must be lying in my glove compartment. Light is peeping through holes in the car cover that holds my room number 3. Outside there’s soft voices of people preparing for bed, before I fall asleep. Who would suspect a parking lot at night can be very comforting?
- June 2007 the car hotel parked in the Dutch city Culemborg in cooperation with Kassandra Wolda and 40 inhabitants of an eco-village with worn out oldtimers and cars-to share.
- Three months later it stopped on a buildingsite parking at IJburg, the Amsterdam suburbia recently built in a lake, and turned it into a touristic destination together with the Blue House – Jeanne van Heeswijk.
- August 2008 Autohotel parked outside counterpart of Hotel Transvaal, in a multicultural and urban renewal neighbourhood in The Hague.
Via: Artichoke magazine
Photo: Kees Kortmulder
Download article here
