I had the opportunity to participate in the “Urbanism Undefined” 2010 Architecture Summer School in Helsinki, Finland; this project is the result of an exploration of urban redevelopment principals, and was developed with my team members Marco Buonocore and Olga-Sofia Mateus.
From the article describing the project: “According to the Vantaa development master plan, the city of Tikkurila, and the central areas must develop as a regional center with a more pronounced, denser urban fabric. While having mixed-use housing is important, it is as important to develop a stronger sense of identity and centrality for this particular regional center.” That was the guiding principle for our proposal.
While it is understandable that there is a justified reason for having wider roads and larger intersections in the northern climate, it is also important to preserve a sense of the city by cultivating more humane streets and offering more diversity in the built environment. At the same time we needed to provide a more coherent system of allocating various functions in the context of the new center.
We limited ourselves to the area specified in the master plan, bordered by the streets Tikkurilantie, Talvikkitie and Kielotie. It is a substantial part of the city comprising several blocks of mixed use that features a diverse selection of buildings.
The planning process was composed of the following stages. They are not placed in any particular order as they are concerned with overlapping spheres and were implemented simultaneously. Changes in one area affected changes in the other areas and caused further improvement.
Project Completed in Summer 2010
Typologies studies that I drafted and analyzed for the urban redevelopment project:
