With outlet stores in design clothing and athleisure wear, Europe’s largest retailer for consumer electronics, a big do-it-yourself-store and a popular fast-food restaurant across the street, this four-story high parking lot is never empty. Cars wait in line for one of the 550 spots in this free parking lot. Covid-19 changed this drastically.

In designing city public spaces there is a focus on shopping as a dominant activity. True public places where a space demands nothing from you in order to enter, nor for you to stay are hard to find. This series offers us this rare moment where you don’t have to (pretend) to buy something to be there.

No longer a place that signifies as a marker of wealth or succes, this parking became the backside of the designed, primary spaces of public life, which are controlled and crippled, following the model of the theme park and the mall.

It leaves us now to contemplate all that has been lost and gained, and what remains to be seen.
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