A parking meter with the ease of an iPhone
Het Parool newspaper / Art & Media (23 May 2011)
by DANIËL BERTINA

In the run-up to the What Design Can Do! symposium, five designers present solutions for Amsterdam nuisances. In today’s fourth instalment: Laurens van Wieringen gets to grips with incomprehensible parking meters.

Since opening his office on Graaf Florisstraat, designer Laurens van Wieringen (Nijmegen, 1974) has had at least 25 frustrated people knocking on his window, asking if he by chance knows how the parking meter works. “Young and old, tourists and born-and-bred Amsterdammers: I’ve seen them all come along. It’s amazing that nobody can understand how those things work. To make matters worse, they differ from district to district. It’s unbelievable that a global city like Amsterdam didn’t involve a good designer when it devised and installed those parking meters. There is simply no idea that unites them all.” A designer of interiors and products, Van Wieringen is co-initiator of What Design Can Do!, a two-day symposium at Amsterdam City Theatre on the role that design can play in solving social problems. “There are loads of design events already,” says Van Wieringen in his studio. “But they are smaller and more specialist. Something like Design Indaba — a huge multidisciplinary event in Cape Town where leaders from the national and international design world gather — didn’t exist yet in the Netherlands.” On his laptop he shows a few bright cartoon-like sketches of solutions for the parking annoyance. From a punchball right beside the meter — so that despondent car drivers can vent their fury — to a parking meter in the form of a cheerful one-armed bandit. But these are just detours en route to the real design: a universal, immediately recognisable and easy-to-use Amsterdam parking meter. Here Van Wieringen turns to an icon: the typical reddish steel bollard called an ‘Amsterdammertje’ that separates the pavement from the street in the Dutch capital. This one is fitted with high-tech software familiar from the iPhone. The result is the iAmsterdammertje: a man-sized version of the well-known city bollard. As a designer you never come up with something completely new, says Van Wieringen. “That’s almost impossible. It’s more of a challenge to think of a recognisable image and then combine it with a surprise.” So much for the form. The iAmsterdammertje is fitted with a touchscreen so that you scroll to use the device. That occurs in three simple steps, which even the biggest digital ignoramus or high-tech hater can grasp. First the machine asks you to type in the parking code, then the registration number of your car, and finally the payment. “And that last bit proceeds without hassle. The iAmsterdammertje accepts everything: debit card, smart card, credit card, or ordinary coins and notes.” The idea for a design is often found fairly quickly, explains Van Wieringen. Most of the time is then spent on working out that idea. For example, in this case detailing the technical and structural aspects, consultation with relevant authorities and client, assessing compliance with regulations, or ensuring that the machine can withstand the work of vandals. “Developing an idea from an initial sketch to a finished product can take months or even years. And if the result still resembles the original idea in some way, then you’re a very good designer.”