Location: Helsinki | Finland

Students (Group Project):
Cody Campbell | M.ARCH1 | UCLA | 2011
Charlie Heid| M.ARCH1 | UCLA | 2011
Ian Thomas| M.ARCH1 | UCLA | 2011
Lillian Zeinalzadgan | M.ARCH1 | UCLA | 2011

Instructor: Kivi Sotamaa

Project Description:

The studio explores the social and architectural space of a port city with the aim of reinventing it for the 21st century. Port cities have historically belonged to a network of other port cities, making them the exciting gateways for new ideas and influences. Unlike landlocked cities, ports used to be the places where people from different cultures collided, they offered safe haven after a long journey at sea, and they were the place where people dreamt of leaving for a better life in an exotic land.
Most port cities started to lose their social vibrancy when trains and airplanes become the fastest mode of transportation, and today, ports have, in most cases, lost their cultural role, and become quaint public parks, prime residential real estate or a place to leave for a 24 hour cruise on a floating casino. In recent decades, industries such a shipyards, have retreated from ports creating an opportunity for residential and commercial development of the seafront all across Europe and North America. Cities, together with architects and planners, have developed innovative new strategies for building on the water’s edge, but with a few exceptions, failed to re-imagine and re-invigorate the social and political space of the harbor for the 21st century.

Colorful Port will amplify the diffusion between water/land, building/landscape, and city/harbor. The diffusion that occurs along the coastline will create diverse intersections of new social spaces. The site is weaved together through the use of public space and carefully crafted views upon approach of each building. Each building is preceded by an invigorated public corridor that leads the user from the city fabric to the harbor’s edge, creating a new and vibrant destination for the city of Helsinki.