Project:
Standing Stone to the Sea

About

• Project Description

  QH311 - STANDING STONE TO THE SEA

  To activate the port and connect it with the center of Larvik, the first question to raise is how to cross the railway line? The easiest solution might have been to design a footbridge with an elevator to easily cross the barrier. But in our opinion, this incredible site does not deserve such a scar in the landscape. What’s more, a bird, a frog or even a lizard cannot take an elevator!The promenade creates a natural link between the old port and the high point of the Bøkkerfjellet hill, meandering like a stream and connecting the city center to the sea. Gently sloping down, the project intends to integrate everyone, from humans young and old to flora and fauna.
  The library is inserted into the walkway, in a space below the promenade. As a bridge of knowledge linking the city and the water.

• Jury Remarks

  The project aims to connect Bøkkerfjellet and the harbor via a promenade. It suggests building a library within this promenade, featuring a walkway on top. The structure can be constructed in phases, using local materials. A part of the library will be inside the hill's bunker. The promenade ends at the harbor, with stairs leading to the water.

  'Standing Stone to the Sea' impressed the jury with its detailed plans and drawings, showing thorough consideration. It focuses on Larvik's features, such as the hill's view of the fjord, a welcoming library atmosphere, wildlife considerations like lizards using the crossing, and the use of local materials. The main concern revolves around the project's lack of flexibility, given its status as a megastructure with fixed connections at both ends. The project could have benefited from focusing less on the details and materiality of the structure and more effort on a sensitive adaptation to the landscape and better resolved meetings with surrounding urban spaces. Additionally, the proposed phases seem unrealistic and more rhetoric.

• Team

  Team Description:
  The meeting between Noémie, Warren and Alexandre was born during our studies in Grenoble, at the Grenoble National School of Architecture.

  Thanks to that we are greatly attached to creating architecture that is innovative, sustainable and anchored in its time, while creating links between different users.

  As we did in the project, for us the relation between elements in situ and the project take place at the begining of the reflexion. Like the stone in the Europan project, is crucial for us to integrate this elements in order to create experimental and non generique architecture.

  All 3 of us are based in Paris and currently working at Snohetta for Warren and Alexandre and Cosa for Noémie.
  
  

  Team Members:
  Alexandre Bailleux (FR), architect
  Warren Louis-Marie (FR), architect
  Noémie Pages (FR), architect

  

  
  
  

• Video Presentation