Urban Fade / Visiondivision
Visiondivison shared their entry for the Koivusaari Idea Competition to create a new city district on an island just outside Helsinki, Finland. The competition asked participants to organize a master plan for the island that would provide the framework for further planning. Visiondivison’s proposal, Urban Fade, is comprised of a highly efficient city grid that allows users the option of moving around the district to interact with the different areas.
More about the proposal after the break.
“In Koivusaari, you will experience a great urban diversity on a relatively small island; a dense city core that gradually fades to smaller premises and that eventually becomes archipelago. The island becomes a distillation of the best qualities that each one of the urban typologies has to offer,” explained the architects.
The proposal divides the city into separate areas: a city center, medium sized town, small town and then the archipelago. These areas create a densely programmed layout where “the distances between the new districts is kept short …to get a lively city area. This is good for both the environment and from an economical point of view.”
The “intense city center” is filled with office, retail and service spaces in close vicinity to transportation lines; green areas surround the “medium sized town” that houses restaurants and residential units; the “small town” area is situated in a park condition; and the archipelago is dominated with public spaces such as piers and pavilions.
Credits: Visiondivision through Ulf Mejergren & Anders Berensson. All images courtesy of the studio.
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18 comments »
Amazing to see that some architects think that a city built according to this plan will not work. The pictures lets imagine a city with the minimum of nature
nice concept, very machine like in its structure.
Im not sure I follow you florian, minimal nature? What about all the water surrounding it?
Nice strict plan, cool outcroppings from the buildings.
i love it! nice old-school plan!
Very clever!
They’ve found a clear, elegant and unique solution.
WOuld probably be supercool to walk around on this little island, a micro-city in itself.
I like the hill effect it becomes when seen from the water.
impresionante!
florian wants to see green roofs.. i thought this was B.I.G.’s..
nice structure.
Interesting idea. It looks like you could expand them in many directions and create a man made archipelago. I don’t know what kind of engineering is required for that or the environmental impact but it sure seems exciting.
Nice Greece-Roman Empire classical idea of a new town, continuating the ever grid every where in the planet, fogeting that we live in something diferent,
There is no reason to buid it there and not in Mars.
Nice presentation for a nonsense idea
But somethink to think about-can architecture determine/create life?
5 minute job
total lack of imagination… a grid? that is more dense in the centre? really? is this it?
The basic idea is good but I hope that the architects that build there will give the project more diversity… Because now it looks to strikt, non-architects don’t like that at all.
whats up with the the little blocks against the facades?
Are they going to force all architects that build there to have those in their design? strange…
binary……. too safe……… lack of creativity….Pericles would be desappointed….. no relationship with the landscape…. what about the water.( not the marinas)……. what about the whole beautiful site….. such a pity.
Let’s take Moshe Safdie’s Montreal Expo ‘67 – Habitat into consideration.. now that one was done well..
i think this is brilliant
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