Thomas B. Thriges Gade 2012 - 2020

Denmark's third largest city, Odense, has a major transformative plan for their city center by 2020. In the 1960s, the Thomas B Thriges Gade allowed Odense to accomodate the demands of growing vehicular traffic, but since then, the city has been hard pressed to break from this defining infrastructure. Utopian City Scape and Entasis have teamed to create a multi-stage development plan for the city center as a way to restore the cohesiveness of a city that has been fragmented by the Thomas B Thriges. The plan sees the introduction of a massive amount of building (more than 55,000 sqm!) that will provide over 300 housing opportunities and 1000 work places. By filling in the street, the smaller networks of secondary streets will be strengthened to create pedestrian passageways and prominades, creating intimate moments that become defined by the edges of the buildings. While we enjoy the light rail system that works its way around the city center, the idea of including a parking lot that accommodates nearly 1000 vehicles seems a bit contradictory. Perhaps, without it, citizens would rely move heavily upon the public infrastructure and the new "connected" feeling of the city to circulate. The absence of cars would further strengthen Odense's move away from a city defined by the vehicle and would allow the master plan to implement its sustainability theme on a macro level.