• commision: competition Europan 8
• date: august 2005
• design : Krill: Harmen van de Wal with Smahan Amrach, Julia Sulzer
• program: 19.600 m2 of housing, retail, leisure and landscaping
• photography architecture model: Jacqueline Schellingerhout
• photography urban model: Bart Goedbloed

This project explores a fascination of us, the colonized architecture. For a competition for a coastal development of a small city in Finland, we decided to focus upon a prototypical building designed for living, shops, leisure and many more without fixing the programs architecturally. It had to be a building like those one find in abandoned harbour areas; strong, sturdy and capable of being completely renovated while keeping its fascinating appearance.

Asked for a housing design, we decided to break away from the function-specific, target group oriented approach of most architecture and instead to make a building that is spatially specific, offering closed, rough and cosey spaces just as open, light and refi ned spaces. This prototypical building could live many lifes, housing a broad variety of people and functions over time. We gave Kemi the harbour buildings it never had, reinventing it’s history.

Tags: housing