The Barneveld Noord Railway Station is a railway station that is located in Harselaar and the north of Barneveld, in the Netherlands. It’s 2.8 kilometers away from the city center of Berneveld, opoening in 1938 originally. In 2013 Dutch Architects, NL Architects, redesigned the station to complete an upgrade of the countries railway stations, a campaign called Prettig Wachten, or Pleasant Waiting.
The aim is to make waiting for trains a more comfortable experience for passengers – the architects used shipping containers to create a temporary structure that could easily be relocated. The architects said of their design, ‘They wanted to create a usable structure from cheap and light materials that could be easier to put together or take apart’; and these large building block shipping containers allowed them to create large sculpture like architecture with minimal effort.
One of the key points to the success of Prettig Wachten is to introduce human presence on these stations, almost to create some sort of informal supervision. One of the ways they have done this is to create small multi functional shops, like a bike-repair shop, or florist run cafe. They will contribute to the maintenance and hopefully prevent vandalism. Just another way shipping containers are contributing to modern architecture, and making waiting time more comfortable and less stressful for travelers.
