Urban Fade

Competition entry for Koivusaari Idea Competition, to create a new city district on a small island just outside Helsinki, Finland.


View from the archipelago


Urban plan


The new district

In Koivusaari you will experience a great urban diversity on a
relatively small island; a dense city core that gradually fades
to smaller premises and that eventually becomes archipelago.
The island becomes a distillation of the best qualities
that each one of the urban typologies has to offer; the intense
city center with offi ces, shops and services close to the bus
and subway station, the medium sized town with more green
areas, restaurants and residential units, the small town that
lies almost in a park situation and fi nally the archipelago with
public piers and pavilions with good life activities.
By keeping it dense, the distances between the new districts
parts is kept short and you don’t have to do so much fi llings
around the island to get a lively city area. This is good for both
the environment and from a economical point of view.


Overlooking the island

Almost every residential unit has a sea view and they also have
a glass room that cantilevers from the façade, creating a new
typology, a deluxe room where you have a panorama over the
ocean and where you can enjoy the cityscape to the fullest.
The city grid is highly effi cient and has many advantages; it
creates lines of views, it has many options of moving around
in the district and it makes the variation in the building scales
even more dramatic, an optical illusion that enhances the
archipelago backdrop.
Koivusaari is planned to accommodate around 5000 people
and have 2500 working places. The island will have about
200 000 m2 residential space, 75000 m2 office space and
45000m2 business premises that makes a total built floor
space area of 320 000 m2.
The land area is a little bit more than 175000 m2.


Street view


Housing prototypes


Plexi model, partly made on the boat to Helsinki

The jury divided the different proposals into four categories; "Upper Class", "Middle Class", "Lower Middle Class" and "Lower Class".
Apparently we were placed in the "Lower Middle Class" category.

Here is the winner and an Upper Class project according to the Finnish elite thinkers;


Kuunari by Ilja Svärd, the winner and one of the "Upper Class" projects.
Congratulations wishes all of us at the lower middle class office visiondivision.
Hopefully we will one day be as good as you! Inshallah