waterfront+urban recycling

project: waterfront | urban recycling
place: Poland | Szczecin
type: bachelor project | academic work
design: june 2011
tutor: Adam Zwolinski
authors: Karolina Tarkowska, Pawel Kochanski
exhibition: project shordlisted as one of the best bachelor projects of 2011 and presented during Westival_architecture festival in Szczecin in 2010 and in FORMA architect’s gallery in Szczecin

.

Project is located on industrial areas, where two river island are meeting each other

Main idea of this project was to bring back life to Szczecin’s postindustrial areas located by the riverside. Despite its by-water location Szczecin is missing thing which is characteristic for similiar cities – a WATERFONT. Concept of multifunctional, mixed-use urban complex might be a good solution to ‘ressurect’ abandoned shipyards and factory areas. A new attractive city district!

Urban design of the complex refers to its historical appearence, but its modified and rearranged, in order to make it more “human-friendly”. Lots of green spaces and sport facilities are created in order to attract people visiting this place. Despite its industrial machine-a-like character, all of the new designed facilities are supposed to respect thing, which we describe as a ‘human scale’. We decided to give most of the new designed public space to people, by limiting car accesibility as much as possible. It leaded us to design a limited-car-acces roads where they were really necessary, but we decided not to let the traffic inside the complex. Car parking problem was solved by creating a network of system car-parks connected by several paths with housing facilities.

To keep the spirit of postindutrial character of this place, so called ‘genius loci’, whe came up whith an idea of ‘urban recycling’. By modifying old shipyard equipment, by changing its usage, we can create lots of new facilities useful to create a worthy and interesting public space. And it gives a lot of ecological and economical benefits!