Truck Stop Border Project: A Polyphonic Space of Transit

- Design Team: studio ilinx & import.export Architecture

- Collaborators: ESPORG, ABVV-BTB, AR-TUR

- 2025-ongoing

Truck stop Border Project is a collaboration between studio ilinx and import.export Architecture that analyzes current spatial conditions and imagines potential futures for the NL-border-truck stops beyond the homogeneity of logistics and approaches them as polyphonic socio-cultural meeting points for a multiplicity of actors and as spaces of care and rest. It will also explore the truck stop as generators for the border zone envisioning new economy and relations in its peculiar context sensitive to their unique identities. 

The project begins by mapping and analysis of the dynamics between the borders & the truck stops in a larger context. Then it zooms in on multiple truck stop models located in the logistic zone in Hazeldonk-Meer extended on two sides of  the Netherlands-Belgium border. The result of the research would be published in a book. Finally, through a series of micro-spatial interventions the project generates new dynamics through which the psychosomatic health of the drivers become a priority and the potentials of the contexts are celebrated.

The project is multi-scalar mediating between different scales from the Trans-European Transport Network to the bed of the truckers. It develops through workshops, conversations and collaborations with multiple actors specially the truck drivers and those in minority, using methods of interview, mapping, photography, and drawings.

This project is kindly supported by the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie.