Instructions

2003

Instructions to raise to a new town of light and shadow
The simplest way to organize a wide plain area so strongly influenced by the landscape, is to drop over it a certain number of similar units. that will come across a natural relationship among each other, reaching the right distance, angle and position to optimize the influence of arctic light, a beautiful colour and unique phenomenon of nature. These units materialized as middle-rise towers that dialogue with the close snowed mountains. The urban structure of this complex is vertically marked by the towers, and horizontally organised by warm public spaces, like interior streets and squares that ensure an alive  public domain during the winter. The towers become the top spatial moments of this interior net, reaching the arctic light from high above to take it underground.  The proposal is using something as delicate and beautiful as arctic light to jump this gap between the overwhelming nature and the futileness of architecture.

2004-2007

Following the competition, the team start an urban stud on the competition site in 2004. For this study, the architectes continue their work concerning techniques to understand comprehend and synthesize the mighty nature: the design work consists in founding procedures capable of extracting the ability and adaptability of nature phenomenon and reproduce it.

The clients stop the study and the implementation process has moved in 2006 to the neighbourhood district, Kroken where there is acomplete lack of a coherent urban structure:. the main facilities are totally disconnected, the very high landscaping qualities are hidden and ignored, and the road, which is in fact its main infrastructure, is indeed splitting it in two.
The strategy proposes to find an identity that rediscovers what is beautiful about Kroken, based on the landscape logics, functioning as a sequence of progressive growth through the addition of urban/landscaping elements, in such way that every step prepares the field for the next one.
In order to emphasize the landscape urbanism identity, the quality of every urban element part of the proposal gets related to nature, and very especially to arctic landscape. This means that all the conventional components of a urban landscape such as paths, roads, infrastructure, buildings, … will be conceived as natural devices rather than as urban ones, and that includes aspects like image, texture, growth, …

Finally, the city and Coop Nord ordered to the team a basic and technical project for an urban park.The most important aim of the project for the New Public Park is to create inside the diffuse and unorganized urban structure of Kroken a new spot capable to realize the elevated needs for exterior public spaces that the neighbourhood has now. And do it by improving and taking advantage of the superb natural landscape that is distinctive of the most beautiful areas of Kroken. The Park scheme is conceived as a  collection of ‘rooms’ or colour patches that sets up a highly flexible functional structure where everyone at Kroken will be able to find a place where they feel comfortable, a place of their own, as it happens with the different rooms of a house. The variety and richness of the scheme will help it absorb all the potential of public activities by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Rather than a classic urban park understood as a enclave  inside the city where nature is aesthetically exposed, this park intends to be an element that interacts with the neighbourhood in terms of public life, providing a sense of urbanity and a possibility to enjoy the outdoor space that now is not present.