KLAKSVIK WAVE

Denmark Faroer Islands 2012

The proposal's goal is to design an urban complex drafted to become a proper city centre, where there are various functions - both public and private - around which an identity for a spontaneously developed community can be built.
In order to allow an economic and cultural development the city has to be renewed, offering services and attractions that redefine Klaksvik's role in the Faroe Islands.
The proposal - after an analysis of the location - is based on the desire to enhance the area's natural and scenic elements, with a view to make the location available in everyday life and flexible to every need, with an architecture where nature is the true protagonist.
Furthermore, the project includes the restoration of the direct contact between city and sea by eliminating all the elements that created a barrier and by adding public spaces located on the paths which reconfigure the already existing functions on the quays. The project includes the integration of various functions - from commercial to managerial, from cultural to residential - because in order to guarantee a new economic and cultural development to the city, they are an indispensable requirement.
During the reconfiguration of the urban fabric, the designers carefully created a continuity between the existing location and the new proposal by adding a series of paths and functions that act as a zipper between sea and land, a technique inspired by a design strategy based on the area's reorganization. The project proposes an urban park characterized by paths that embrace the cove and that are composed of inclined planes able to architecturally give a new shape to the entire area; on one side, the planes facilitate a smooth flow from the inside to the sea, and on the other they allow to add functions in the spaces below. The form of these planes comes from the movement of the waves crashing against the land.