[Image: Proposed harbor plan]

Winners of an international call-for-entries for harbor-front redevelopment in Kotka, Finland, b4Architects [along with Matteo Rossetti and our ninja Luigi Valente] create a new urban interface between land and sea with their proposal for the Europan 9 competition.

[Image: Rendering of proposed harbor residences]

Kotka is a harbor town born from the local wood + paper industries - which brought business and shipping traffic to the harbor while causing a disconnect between the residents and the waterfront, much like other port-cities around the world. Now that these industries have different shipping/harbo-front needs, the city is left with a large expanse of empty waterfront to reshape - envisioning a realization of a ‘contemporary idea of living’.

The proposed plan seems to pick up a number of existing roads, while emphasizing one as a type of urban spine leading to the water - off of which a grid is formed to contain the proposed inland housing. MNP’s interest, however, lies in these floating homes which are being proposed - which look pretty siiick.

[Image: Axon of proposed ‘floating’ harbor residences]

Connected through a number of ‘pedestrian + mooring wharfs’, the homes appear to be elegant wooden structures [3 types: terrcae, one level and two level] that most definitely do the local wood industry justice. Their location [ON the water] is interesting/provocative while being culturally + locally relevant, speaking to Kotka’s history as a harbor city.

[Image: Sections + plans of proposed harbor residences]

The entire project is concentrated on this dialectic concepta€™s reality of the limit between land and water: the coast line is a contemporary start and end point of the citya€™s territory.

It is the place where the limit of the vastness of Nature and the sense of the anthropologya€™s made up order imposes itself. This citya€™s part marks a mediation between the naturea€™s infinity and the that basic human will of building a€insidea€™ spaces [translated description of the project from Luigi, via his site].

[Image: Rendering of additional proposed inland housing]

[Image: Rendering of proposed public harbor-front space]

For more images - and plans + sections for the other parts of the project - head on over to Luigi’s site.

::originally posted over at AMNP::

.::Check out our previous a€Ninja Homesa€ features->