The innovative system of neighbourhood revitalises the extensive industrial area and combines environmental sustainability and community atmosphere leading to a contemporary idea of living nature, common areas and shared spaces. 400.000 sq m of new functions and activities, an envisioning piece of urban fabric that suits the needs of more than 5000 new residents and naturally restores the relation between the lake and the city.
Tampere has always been a frontrunner in the innovation exchange with the rest of Finland. Empowered by Tampere’s industrial heritage and buzzy environment the promoted interaction between the immediate environment and the urban fabric in a proposal for Viinikanlahti will become a landmark for Tampere, as well as a leading example for developing sustainable, affordable and livable homes.
The vision uses the beneficial values of urban nature in a process from the bottom up, experiment, pioneer and share city nature in Viinikanlahti, and make the district continuously more climate robust and pleasant to live and move around in. Working with the people of Tampere, the design will plant and grow a sensual, varied, blue-green and site-specific Viinikanlahti city nature that will become the backbone of the area’s future identity and its urban living, as well as climate-secure the district and strengthen the special innovativeness of Tampere.
Natural Alliance is a new unique district, where the lake and city merge and create a great setting for the everyday life of both residents and visitors, for Viinikanlahti and Tampere; a strategy that values the natural connection, the industrial history and the life that is lived today and in the future of Tampere.
The Cycles
The ‘Natural Alliance’ requires a strong emphasis on community and circularity by constructing a resource-efficient neighbourhood that involves local residents. The systems are supported by the structure through collective shared spaces that are found within the blocks and throughout the public realm. Together the spaces form a binding network of social
pockets, supporting a variety of functions and scales, restoring the city’s relationship with the water. The foundations of the proposal are cycle designs; because precisely the concept of cycles, as we know it from the wild, has the strength to adapt to external influences and create properly functioning ecosystems that we as citizens can actively contribute to. The cycles generate a series of integrated solutions like water harvesting, renewable energy, local food production, and localised composting. Reducing the living costs and engaging people into the community by rethinking the design, management and life cycle of our built environment.
Sustainability is an integral force behind all the design decisions of ‘Natural Alliance’; from mediating climatic conditions and responsible use of space, to building adaptability for future users. The plan behaves as a mediator between the chain cycles and the living and leisure activities providing a symbiotic relation between people and nature.
• The Water Cycle
Tampere city nature needs the usefulness and enhanced value of rain water. That is why the design is working with holistic rain water solutions that are part of a larger cycle. From small to large scale, rain water is seen as a resource where the water is collected, purified and reused.
The water cycle optimises Tampere resource consumption, climate secures the area surrounding Höyrynpuisto Park and Viinikanlahdenpuisto Park, purifying the water in the lakes and makes Tampere even greener.
• The Biodiversity Cycle
Nature’s biodiversity cycles are revitalising, dynamic and constantly evolving. From the most fragile saplings to old hoary trees, new suckers, birdsong, fallen leaves, death and weathering, nature gives us a feeling of being part of something greater. Viinikanlahti will become the birthplace of a biological diversity and variety. The biodiversity cycle will ensure a diverse, adaptable and unique city nature and natural experiences in the centre of Viinikanlahti.
• The Social Cycle
Viinikanlahti is going to be the most diverse district in Tampere. The density, community feeling and tolerance will be quite unique for the district. But in busy everyday life, new communities often have a hard time. The social cycle should increase everyday happiness in Viinikanlahti by promoting large and small communities across social resources, generations, sex and race. The purpose of the social cycle is to strengthen commitment to, as well as the co-creation of the city’s, as well as the world’s, wellbeing. The social cycle is anchored in the centre of the plot with the school working as a social catalyser.
• The Economic Cycle
The Natural Alliance rethinks how we design, build, finance and share our future homes, neighbourhoods and cities. The aim is to allow for cheaper homes to enter the market, make it easier to live sustainably and affordably, and ensure more fulfilling ways of living together. By increasing density and combining private living with common spaces we share the construction costs creating affordable homes. The high density and a quality network of public spaces creates a vibrant community with a social lifestyle that promotes interaction and small business, also inviting visitors into the new district.
A new shore line design restores the city’s relationship with the water and the geometric design increases the shore line dimension enhancing the contact between the city and water. This extensive shore line creates a coherent and sustainable infrastructure that establishes local and recreational flows and urban spaces for the district’s residents.
As an extension of the local context, the project grows into a dense city grid. The structure breaks down into finer grained blocks that are human scaled and walkable as it gets closer to the shoreline. At the lake promenade, the vegetation and water are preserved and strengthened into an inviting longitudinal intricate structure of different social spaces and activities. The shoreline moves from being heavily built up to a park with a rich and diverse environment. The proposal strongly suggests using nature as a framework for urban development; a green ecological corridor linking Höyrynpuisto Park and Viinikanlahdenpuisto Park. Generating a continuous connection of green spaces and in the other way reconnecting the city to the lake through a series of paths and squares creating a continuous urban landscape with the existing fabric; promoting a sense of increasingly green structure that culminates into the shoreline ecological corridor.
In order to create a hierarchy that goes from the fast city of cars and public transports to the calm of nature and water, three lines were created to organise the project and comprehend different lifestyles: fast, medium and slow.
The Fast Line represents the link between the existing city and Viinikanlahti. It’s the street that concentrates all the main transportation and that assures the buzz and thrill of a dynamic public life. Trams, cars, bikes and pedestrians share this link in an harmonious and vibrant way.
A central street, the Medium Line, serves as the infrastructural link that runs parallel to the lake, binds the district together and provides an urban backbone for commercial urban life through a series of social pockets in between the new blocks.
The Slow Line binds the city and lake landscape together. Not just for the new development area, but for the entire district. The slow line offers new ways to use and experience the lake in the city, creates new opportunities for maritime life and activities and forms the transition from city to the landscape. This highlights the lake as the entire city’s blue centre, where the development of Viinikanlahti is a story of the reunion between city and lake, where urban life and development go hand in hand with nature and landscape.
Along the coast are various types of coastal type profiles to provide varying experiences and serve recreational purposes. The three different lines provide opportunity for different programmes.
In the Slow Line, landscape literally is drawn into urban areas; this permits the shore landscape, ecosystems, flora and fauna to be integrated into the urban realm, creating a new type of urban space in direct contact with water with new opportunities to explore and use the lake such as rowing centre, urban beach, recreational harbor, sauna, swimming pool, water playground.
Along the Medium Line walking and cycling is prioritised by shifting the block structure and creating social rooms in the public realm. These rooms are the ‘social pockets’ of the plan, collectively forming a network of shared built and unbuilt spaces that support ‘circular’ activities throughout Viinikanlahti. Such as parks, playgrounds, agriculture, school, bars and cafés, collective kitchens, sauna’s, maker spaces, electric bike centres and repair cafés, green houses, food gardens, waste recycle spaces, plug-and-play squares, and energy pockets.
The Fast Line provides car access and public transportation. The mobility hubs are strategically located near access roads to minimise internal traffic and to enhance public transport, biking, and pedestrian movement within the neighbourhood. Activities such as restaurants, shops, recycling centres that handle remanufacturing and managing raw material flows, electric bike and car recharging stations.
The new piece of urban fabric adapts to the inhabitant’s needs providing a local dimension of interactions. All the buildings are shaped by a continuous pathway that reveals new perspectives and corners where the architecture meets nature, a system that improves access and mobility. This concept finds its way building an environment where the porosity is the main theme.
The school design is created by looping the interior space of the building, the structure encloses a protected environment reduced to children’s scale. That allows the courtyard to be flexible in order to suit a wide range of activities, from outdoor classes to didactic interaction with nature in the everyday. During the evening the courtyard is open to the city sharing with the community by making the school part of the public realm.
The role of the school in this new environment is not anymore a mere new function, but an innovative collector of new activities, an urban hub that attracts new flows and generates a unique core of the urban life for all.
The entire layout of this main organism is thought in order to allow the flow to get inside all the courtyards and to keep continuous the use of the spaces through the buildings. The heterogeneous width of the passages creates a system with various levels of privacy passing from public spaces to shared ones to private courtyards. That permits the whole system to be continuously porous and constantly attractive.
The dense network of functions and activities is framed by an exciting mix of work and housing typologies. The blocks embrace diversity, encouraging a combination of building heights, typologies, configurations and uses. The result is a textured community where residents can choose to live how they please, top floors of the buildings offer the benefit of city views, while lower units have the advantage of a private garden.
The block offers residents collective spaces at different scales, from house to block, from street to neighbourhood. The proportions of the blocks and spaces ensure a flexible distribution of functions, allowing spaces to evolve and move over time.
Shared common rooms act as extensions of people’s homes and reduce the need for private spaces within the apartment. The residents of a block can share common spaces dedicated for sports, sauna, co-working, building and tinkering, laundry, making music etc. For example, guest rooms can be shared, home offices can be part of the shared spaces system and big family events can be organised in the blocks common living room. Ideally the residents participate in planning the use of their common areas.
The diversity of each typology in height, material, fenestration and balconies redefines the traditional structure of each block, creating an exciting and vibrant piece of city. The robust block structure and the flexible infill allows for the further development of the building process to allocate both affordable housing or luxurious typologies. Create a robust framework surrounding constantly changing life. Where it is precisely the differences that create a space for all.