Exploring the relationship between water and urban life, Blue Urbanism focuses on the ways architecture can facilitate how we perceive and value our ties to the sea. Taking case studies from across the world, this series will take a critical look at the ways contemporary cities are evolving alongside the environment.
Architecture dances with the sea. Reflecting the human condition, many iconic buildings and distinctive manmade landscapes are designed alongside the rise and fall of the world’s oceans. Situated amidst rising sea levels, melting ice caps and devastating natural disasters, there is an increasing need for architects and designers to actively reshape the coastal cities of tomorrow. With disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy becoming more commonplace, cities are looking for smarter and more resilient urban strategies.
View of New York After Hurricane Sandy; Iwan Baan, 2012
From Hamburg’s raised HafenCity to New York’s own BIG project, different designs are beginning to explore the forces shaping coastal life and how cities can prepare for the challenges of tomorrow. These projects are sited at the intersection of diverse disciplines, drawing together aspects and qualities of landscape, architecture, planning and ecology. But if design is going to raise awareness of environmental conditions and how cities can work with larger processes, we must turn our attention to public space. The places we gather, debate and discover must be creatively reimagined amid cultural and natural confluences.
© BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group, Rebuild by Design
The Big U by BIG, New York, N.Y., United States
First, we look to Murmansk, Russia, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Showcasing the dramatic effects of climatic change on infrastructure and development, Murmansk is emblematic of the larger Barents Sea and renewed international attention for its economic potential. Examining the city from a regional and urban perspective, we can quickly see a radically changing landscape. Two coastal conditions are readily apparent, both requiring novel approaches to public space and urban design.
As the only yearlong ice-free port along the Northern Sea Route, Murmansk is part of larger regional plans to create 10 times the existing offshore petroleum infrastructure in the Barents Sea over the next 20 years. With a waterfront already dominated by industry and manufacturing, citizens have few public connections to their harbor. While these massive infrastructure projects are urbanizing both the shoreline and the ocean itself, they must be created with the context of Murmansk and its public realm.
Here, projects like Snøhetta’s Oslo Opera House can inform how Murmansk can regain a historically defining condition of the city through critical, multivalent design. Designs like the Opera House are inherently democratic, spaces that support the continuity of urban life and embrace it. The project simultaneously reveals historic conditions and values while allowing new programmatic activities to occur. Here, contemporary life is celebrated alongside the harbor and the public realm.
Norwegian National Opera by Snøhetta, Oslo, Norway
Beyond Murmansk’s waterfront and expanding infrastructure, there are unique cultural trends that are intimately tied to public space and the environment. Residents of Murmansk have a rare tradition of gathering inside garages to mend cars during the cold winter months, a communal typology called Sea Shells. These garages are compact structures spread across the city, spaces that are woven into the daily lives of locals and their identity.
The Sea Shell Garages of Murmansk
As regional climate warms up and fishing seasons are extended, these structures — places that define the cultural life of local citizens — are increasingly left empty. How can these shelters be repurposed or their usage extended? Designers can begin by looking across disciplines, embodied by the work of offices like Lateral Office. With projects like IceLink and Klaksvik City Center, urban and spatial morphology is understood in tandem with the evolving nature of environmental conditions.
Lateral’s Klaksvik project shows how a rich investigation of existing typologies, building stock and geography can inform new spatial and tectonic ideas. Moreover, the proposal goes beyond the competition brief to address the town’s underdeveloped waterfront alongside its poorly defined public spaces, diverse maritime and cultural events as well as the integration of urban forestry.
Klaksvik City Center by Lateral Office, Klaksvik, Faroe Islands
There are a few projects already underway throughout Russia that are beginning to address Blue Urbanism concepts. Russian architecture firm Project Meganom designed a masterplan for Moscow that aims to reconnect citizens to the Moskva River through an area of industrial zones that currently lack amenities, recreational areas or access to the waterfront. A similar approach is being taken in Saint Petersburg. Gensler developed a plan to reclaim 450 hectares of waterfront at the end of Vasilievsky Island, a project that would mitigate subzero temperatures while connecting citizens to the harbor through waterfront parks and public spaces.
Project Meganom’s Masterplan for the Moscow Riverfront
As we shape our cities, we must begin creating spaces and environments that rethink coastal relationships and their connection to public spaces. Advocating awareness and cultural landscapes, new designs should allow citizens to experience waterfronts while simultaneously promoting urban resilience. In this way, we can begin to confront the landscapes of tomorrow by embracing the spaces where people, architecture and the sea collide.