Project
Client
Public and privateWhy Unrealised
CostsTypology
Urbanism/StrategyLocation
Kirkenes, Sør-Varanger, NorwayProject Year
2005Project Size
60000 m2Workhours
900
// COLLECTION STATUS // PROJECTS = 104 / SQUARE METERS ± 4.566.598 / COST IN NOK ± 30.159.500,00
Project ID#114
Chose Picture
b4architects
EUROPAN 8-URBAN INTERSECTIONS
Context as a starting offFew topics have been constant objects of many recent discussions about urban design: its role in urban strategies, its meaning as a connection between different scales and themes, when cities - more than before - must rapidly change according to local expectations and international demands. It seems easier to answer about what urban design shouldn’t be: a large scale architectural project, a rigid vision or a simple programme. What exactly is can only be found out by working in specific contexts.
That’s the most challenging theme suggested by Europan 8 for Kirkenes. Although focused on a specific site, it can be seen also as a request for suggestions about Kirkenes’ development and its new role in Barents area. Thus the town centre’s renewal isn’t just a local theme as long as an urban strategy cannot be based anymore only on its industrial development. This project tries to offer an answer, as a chance to discuss about urban design, in two scales of intervention. At an urban scale, some suggestion are given for a strategic development: energy and environment research centre, working relationships of Barents area research centre, language and literature centre, with residential and commercial facilities. Because of their spatial needs these functions can be located in different areas, linked to the waterfront with new connections, generating a multi-pole system. At a local scale different references have been found: site morphology, urban frameworks, green connections. New functions are integrated with existing urban services, leisure activities, residential; and the projects looks at Kirkenes as a changing city but still deeply influenced by its harbour’s role. All these links with the context – urban form, functions and images – allow the city centre’s renewal to diffuse its effects to the rest of the town.
The project as an open framework
In the competition’s site an open space connects the main present buildings and the new ones to create a new civic centre. This square, with paved and green areas, can change according to different purposes.
The new buildings host urban activities like shops, cinema, museum. They follow the existing town centre framework, and run along the descents to the sea, partly suspended over the existing slope. Made of wood, steel and glass, they either contain stairs to the waterfront level or are located closed to them, with many public spaces (bars, reading halls, restaurants) on the square level and on the roof. In this way, they represent the square’s extension to the fjord’s landscape. The square and the buildings are crossed by green connections from the school to the church’s green area and the slope, designed as a free park.
The waterfront intercepts different directions as an adaptive area for public spontaneous events, according to possible changes in urban needs, with only few indications: light signs on the pavement along the context’s main directions; an open system of leisure small buildings, whose number can vary depending on different occasions, and whose position can be freely defined; and a congress hall elevating from an artificial island designed as a public square, conclusion of the “green wedge” coming from the south-eastern bay as a city extension to the sea. Every component has been conceived like a metaphorical link to the harbour, main reference in Kirkenes’ image; building as wharves or cranes’ cantilever beams, congress hall as an anchored ship, square as a deck, leisure facilities as containers. Building dimensions are strictly connected to the urban context. None of them is higher than the existing church, and the biggest ones are located close to the biggest existing buildings. The project promotes accessibility of every space and functions, emphasizing connections and free pathways between different internal parts towards the rest of the town; and mixture of spaces and functions, avoiding mono-functional contexts and searching complexity of uses and ways of living the city. These choices try to refer the project to the complexity of European historical town centres, without architectural mimesis but also avoiding an easy auto-referring language.
Since urban design is the suggestion of a multi-scale process, it’s base must be a general vision resulting from a collective discussion. That’s this project’s purpose: to represent an open framework, aiming to follow the urban development process in the next years.
27.09.07
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