Europan Norway

Jury's statement:

IA647 strengthens the city as a system of urban uses by working synthetically with scales, players, and spaces. The project presents different layers with qualitative analyses that altogether offer a rich picture of the existing and possible future urban elements. Real and potential parties are listed and overlapping interests on local, regional, and global levels are mapped. In sum, the project envisages a very interesting system for reading the city as an elastic system that is subject to constant growth and shrinking, as a result of its exposure to different forces. The abstract discussion is valuable and the project makes a big effort to establish an analytic reading of the existing and future urbanity. These readings can be developed further as a method for reflection, discussion, and decisions for the future city

Jury's statement:

The new buildings proposed by VK305 strengthens the role of the city grid platform. The scale of the platform and the in-between space is intimate and sheltered. At the same time, it opens up views down on the waterfront and out towards the harbor basin. The buildings are both wellanchored to the platform and suspended over the waterfront. This introduces a completely new building concept for the city. Below, the waterfront is opened up and given a rather low density and a lot of open space.The city centre platform extension has a well-proportioned, linear public space that integrates well with the existing buildings in the study area. The sections themselves show a balanced cityscape with interesting spatial relationships. The strength of the scheme lies in the fact that it identifies the need to develop a mechanism that connects-integrates various loose elements in the existing fabric.