Project:
L.A.R.S Linking Åsane

About

• Project description

  L.A.R.S. linking Åsane - a re-mastering strategy - formulates a new town centre for the Bergen suburb Åsane. The strategy is to pull existing conditions and continuities across the site, let them work with, against and next to each other. Their sudden encounters generate a site-specific mix and edition of urbanity.
  The existing mall is extended across the road to form the base for a multi-programmatic stacking. Landscape connections are wrapped around the resulting big volumes and a view- or walk-related housing topology is on hand. On a building level individual programmatic interests are played out, generating accidental gaps and courtyard-like holes that allow for unpredicted contacts and encounters. While working with the self-concerned logics of suburbia, L.A.R.S. engenders a field in which to meet, stumble upon, run into and come across an emerging diversity.

  

• Jury remarks

  LARS takes the platform strategy one step further by covering the whole motorway between the site and the existing Åsane center.

  This approach integrates the existing and new projects into one urban structure. The platform is a strong connecting element on the level of the landscape, linking the forested hillsides with central parts of the Åsane valley. The platform strategy establishes one common ground floor for the existing center area and the site, a gesture that is very flexible in terms of urban development. A new public space is established for both the project and the existing surroundings. 
  
  The strategy is bold but also a lot more demanding. It is an "all or nothing" proposal with little flexibility on the question of crossing the motorway.

• Team

  Architects
  Andreas QUEDNAU (DE)
  Sabine MÜLLER (DE)