Year: 2017
Competition: Europan_14
Where: Karlskrona, Sweden
Team: Fiamma Ficcadenti, Alessandro Lungo, Valeria Guerrisi, Nadya Vereshchagina, Flavio Bellone
What: Urban regeneration, waterfront design.
Participant Project
“KarlSharing” is an intervention that tackles the challenges of the project: find the solution to the problems caused by Österleden street, a physical barrier that drives people at high speed to the heart of the old town. Muddret and Hattholmen are currently territories denied to citizens who have forgotten the identity and functionality of these areas that only wait to be recovered as part of the collective memory.
By implementing the last studies concerning urban design and management of the public space, our proposal reinterprets the city’s relationship with water as a landmark reference and active resource in shaping urban life although integrating the new urban expansion in continuity with the spatiality of the old town.
The design approach is based on the tool of the “Shared Space”, a space-based practice that, based on the concept of total continuity of urban surfaces, aims to overcome segregation between pedestrians and vehicles, between spaces dedicated to the passage and public places.
Vehicle flows, pedestrian zones, bike path, public spaces are designed to ensure the continuity of the space, without any physical or visual barrier. This strategy determines a certain degree of perceptual disorientation that drives motorists and pedestrians to greater caution and mutual respect (Monderman, 1982).
In accordance with this strategy, Österleden is transformed into a “living street”: the 4 lanes dilate by introducing into the centre a dorsal of public space that is teeming with activities related to the social dimension of the city, extending from the new gateway to the Historical centre of Karlskrona. The new entrance to the city hosts parking spaces where a “people mover” bring people to the city centre, limiting commuter automobile traffic to the old town.
The road reinterpreted as public space is connected to a new vision of the relationship towards the water: the waterfront is no longer understood as an urban “frontier” beyond which the water domain begins, but as a real urban space that enters the city giving it shape.
A residential scenery embraces the water squares, which are considered as real public space that welcome function and activities.
In addition, innovative features are being introduced to regenerate the city and to activate the potential attractivity of Karlskrona for young people, students and workers: a water pavilion for research into water production, coworking, startup incubators and exhibition spaces.
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