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Norwegian poetics – 2nd life of the industrial city

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November 16, 2011
Cities, Public Realm
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As is the case with many countries, Norway has its share of large, polluted industrial areas defined by monumental infrastructure, lack of permeability and complicated way-finding. These areas often feature a concentration of land uses that have been deliberately isolated from the surrounding city due to their unpleasant nature. Lin Skaufel, Associate at Gehl, is currently dealing with a project of this nature in Breivoll, Oslo. Together with Hans Martin Aambø, Project Manager, and his team at Planning & Building Authority of Oslo Municipality, they have investigated how these areas can become integrated within the city and methodologies for approaching city design can be used in industrial areas.

Breivoll is in the industrial area Groruddalen that stretches approximately 15 km north east of Oslo. Through lack of a coherent planning policy, the area has developed haphazardly over time along the beautiful river Alna. Breivoll is only 4 km from the center of Oslo and has the potential to become an urban generator for Groruddalen region.

I asked Lin to answer some questions for us on the project:

The pictures are from Lin's presentation framing Breivoll's positive characters. The headlines say Contrasted, Place of opportunities and Mental city planning. The last picture is from a light walk Groruddalssatningen facilitated

+Where did you begin and what did you do?  

I grew up in Oslo and had only been to Breivoll once before. We had no reason to go there. It was never part of my mental map of Oslo and I think it counts for many of the citizens.

We developed a plan based on principals with concepts focusing on mental and physical city planning. We strongly believe these initiatives will attract investors, residents, users and visitors.

Firstly the area needs a rock solid physical cleaning up to make it work. Such as creating mixed functions, increasing the walkability, new metro station and improve the accessibility. Basically we need to strengthen the backbone. The plan concentrates on basic space identity and grasps what’s fascinating about the existing characters. By making a more playful area we give people a reason to come there. Making events, using temporality, experimenting and telling the industrial story, changing some of the functions and utilize the wonderful amenity value around Alna for relaxation and mindfulness. 

Also from Lin's presentation. For the first picture "Magical destination" is about creating something Oslo does not have and making it special for Breivoll. We have borrowed the picture from Raum Labor Berlin. The second picture "Other spatialities" is about using space in a completely different way than originally thought (Picture is borrowed from http://scienceabroad2011.blogspot.com/2011/07/glimpse-of-dusseldorf-and-ruhr-region.html). The last picture "Breivoll twist" is a collage made by Lin about using existing functions in new ways.

+This city typology may off hand seem very limiting and uninspiring – Which opportunities does this city typology give you?  

It is about using and finding the histories and potentials within the area. Working with second life; keeping instead of eroding. Interesting places are difficult to make. Breivoll has an super interesting complexity within contrasts between the industrial anti-nature, high noise, rough architecture and the poetic, peaceful, silent and rich wildlife nature around Alna. Imagine using this contrasted landscape and mindscape as a catalyst for change.

In Breivoll The Salvation Army has an enormous stockroom of collected cloth, you’ll find Norway’s biggest distributor of car tires, a huge recycle stations and car scrappers. All of this could be attractions and part of events. These places are often stocked with do-it-yourself distributors. The areas can then also be seen as handy and a place to do things. It is about understanding the beauty and potential in industry: There’s lots of space, it’s robust, generous and flexible. So it’s about changing the narratives and imagination of these places. About putting them on the mental map of the city. Creating a reason to go there. It’s about making the development of Breivoll poetically, entrepreneurial and vibrant. About discovering the second life of industrial cities and linking it (mentally and physically) the rest of the city.

Headlines sayi The Process, Example and Eventful. The pictures are from Berlin, Carlsberg in Copenhagen and PS1 in New York.

Check out second lives of industrial areas

Check out the video by André Crocton “Time is the essence” with music by Cold Mailman. It’s a timelaps-video of habitation in Groruddalen. This is an example of one of the many initiatives the municipality have undertaken.

See also the news paper articles Breivoll Faar hjelp av anerkjente arkitekter and Spektakulere planer for Breivoll.

Gehl Architects in London

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February 4, 2011
News
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View towards Sugar House Lane area

Gehl Architects, “world-famous Danish street-planners” according to bdonline.co.uk, have been hired by Ikeas development arm, Landprop, to help with a regeneration scheme in Londons East End. “Gehl Architects will work on all public spaces, as well as residential, retail and industrial land.” writes bdonline.co.uk.

The development is in Stratford, at Sugar House Lane, in close proximity to the Olympic legacy area. The site is a former industrial site that has been declared a conservation area in 2008. The area has a lot of qualities in terms if both history, scale and location. But it also carries with it a lot of challenges, not least some of the harsh surroundings with major traffic arteries running along it on more sides. From Gehl Architects the project has been lead by Louise Grassov, assisted by Henning Thomsen, Sofie Kvist and Rasmus Frisk.

Major traffic arteries surround the site

A former industrial area filled with good scale and building qualities

Opportunities to tie in to existing non-motorized infrastructure

Gehl Architects in Los Angeles

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January 27, 2011
Cities, News, Public Realm
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Illustration: Gehl Architects

What would you do if you had $20 million dollars and were tasked with turning three and a half miles of one of Los Angeles’ most iconic streets into the kind of street that encourages people to be outside?  That’s the question the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) raised in 2010.

Follow the discussion on LA.Streetsblog.org.

Gehl Architects have been developing ideas for this iconic streetscape of Los Angeles and for those of you in the neighborhood, Gehl Architects director Oliver Schulze is giving a talk at the UCLA February 11 on the issue of Public Space and Public Life.

Figueroa as it appears today - space enough for cars, but is it good for people?

Making the best of what is there - but is it worthy of a great city to treat its people like this?

Gehl Architects illustration of some possible improvements to Figueroa, Los Angeles

A possible future for Figueroa? Illustration by Gehl Architects.

Gehl Architects featured in new Vienna landscape architecture guide

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December 15, 2010
News, Public Realm
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Blue side, Aspern Seestadt

Gehl Architects project for Aspern Seestadt in Vienna has been chosen as the sole future project to feature in a new guide to existing landscape architecture in Vienna. The project is a result of a 1st Prize in an open competition in 2009 to refine and develop a politically adopted masterplan for the old airport of Vienna in Aspern. Gehl Architects delivered the next evolution of the vision through refined strategies for an attractive public realm. The  result is a planning tool that informs directly the further design of public infrastructure and private real estate development. The Handbook for Public Spaces recognizes key lines of leisure and transport infrastructure in the masterplan by Johannes Tovatt.

It refines these lines of the plan by crystallizing a series of unique and unifying ‘evolutionary axes of urban development’. Through this strategic intervention it is made possible to focus public and private capital investment over the coming generations to strengthen those urban structures of the new district where public life is expected to satisfy defined minimum standards of urban intensity and perceived urban quality.

Architects Oliver Schulze and Lærke Jul Larsen have been the main Gehl Architects people on this project.

Check out the new guide to landscape architecture in Vienna here.

Check out some illustrations of Gehl Architects project here.

Read more about Aspern Seestadt on their homepage.

Gehl Architects report ‘Partitur des öffentlichen Raums‘ is available on the Aspern Seestadt homepage.

On being a pedestrian in Chennai, India

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December 8, 2010
Cities, News, Research
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An ordinary day on a street in Chennai.

Being a pedestrian on the streets of Chennai, India, is not the easiest of things. On the third day of the Public Life Public Space workshop, that Gehl Architects is giving to ITDP and Chennai City Connect, the topic of Public Space was on the agenda. Detailed investigations and documentations of the public life and how it unfolds were the focus and the workshop participants were on the streets studying these issues.

Lars Gemzøe, Gehl Architects, explaining how to study public space

To see for yourself how challenging it is to be a pedestrian in Chennai take a look at this little film from Sir Thyagaraya Road:

Second part of the third workshop day was the introduction to the volunteers, who are going to help carry out the Public Life Public Space survey over the next three days. Gehl Architects, ITDP and Chennai City Connect workshop participants and volunteers, who come from four different architecture schools in Chennai, met at Chennai City Connect offices for the briefing.

Architects and architecture students being briefed before they hit the streets to carry out the very first Public Life Public Space survey in India

Doing a Public Life Public Space survey requires a tremendous amount of preparations and planning

...but the whole thing is also a lot of fun - Mahesh Radhakrishnan, MOAD, and Sia Kirknæs, Gehl Architects in the middle of planning the PLPS survey activities

Mahesh Radhakrishnan briefing students on the PLPS survey

Sia Kirknæs, Gehl Architects, along with Mahesh Radhakrishnan, instructing students on the PLPS survey

And here is the plan. The PLPS survey will be carried out over the next three days - more on this to follow.

And take a look at the Public Space Survey Manual developed by Gehl Architects:

Hobart in Copenhagen

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November 4, 2010
Cities, Public Realm
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Hobart in Copenhagen

Gehl Architects is working in Hobart, Tasmania – just finalizing a  Public Space and Public Life survey and a strategy for how to make a city with people in mind. The survey is first stage of Hobart Inner City Development Plan

The Public Space and Public Life survey report is focusing on a series of main themes: How to take advantage of and underline Hobart’s unique setting as a city by the sea sitting in a wonderful landscape, how the city can become a fine place for people to move around (more on foot, cycle and transit compared to now), how the public outdoor spaces can be more inviting for all sorts of people and have greater diversity of use. Finally Gehl Architects also look at the quality of the appearance of the streetscapes at eyelevel.

A delegation from the city: Neil Noye, Director Development and Environmental Services, Andrew Tompson, Director City Services and George Wilkie, Manager Architectural Projects spent last week in Copenhagen working with Gehl Architects in a workshop in the office to discuss the draft report in more detail and in particular the recommendations.  The workshop also contained ‘on the ground’ tours of the city of Copenhagen, Malmø, Sweden and Oslo and Bergen, Norway. At Gehl Architects it was primarily Sia Kirknæs, Lars Gemzøe and Jan Gehl who were responsible for the Hobart delegation when they were visiting.

Hobart in Copenhagen

Broadway blocking-off highlighted in Philips Livable Cities Award

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October 27, 2010
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The blocked-off Broadway at Times Square in New York City, USA

Last spring, seven blocks of traffic on Broadway in the heavily-congested areas around Times and Herald squares were blocked off to cars, making it a pedestrian’s paradise. This project is one of nine chosen to illustrate the principles behind the Philips Livable Cities Award.

Through this award Philips is looking for individuals and community or non-governmental organizations and businesses with ideas for “simple solutions” that will improve people’s health and well-being in a city. Such solutions should enter the Philips Livable Cities Award.

The idea on Broadway to turn the so-called “squares” back into pedestrian spaces, as squares in Europe are designed came from New York City’s Department of Transportation Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, assisted by data and analysis provided by Gehl Architects. The project, which started in May 2009 as a test-trial to reduce traffic, turned into a permanent conversion this past February after data showed an overall seven percent improvement in traffic flow. Plans have been announced to make a similar adjustment by introducing a car-free plaza to Union Square by Labor Day 2010 and to 34th Street in between Fifth and Sixth avenues in 2012.

The nine existing simple solutions are examples of active initiatives that are helping to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in cities. These solutions are being run in a number of countries and have helped people of all ages and their communities, to improve city life, and they serve as inspiration for prospective contestants to enter their project in the Philips Livable Cities Award.

Also Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, is featured in the show of existing simple solutions, with a project about Pocket Parks. Pocket Parks aim to improve the lives and ameliorate stress of the residents of a city. Less than 5,000 square meters in size, pocket parks are intended to utilize unused elements of land within (the) city. Check out this project here.

Read more about the nine existing projects chosen by Philips here.

Read more about the Philips Livable Cities Award here.

Read Philips own top tips for a winning entry here.

Read more about the New York City initiatives through the Department of Transportation here.

Read more about Gehl Architects work in New York City here:

Make urban development slow

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October 26, 2010
Cities, Public Realm
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In an enquete in the Danish daily, Berlinske Tidende, Gehl Architects Kristian Villadsen comments on the potential for high quality urban development on the Carlsberg Brewery site in Copenhagen. Kristian has among other things, been an advisor for Gehl Architects to the Carlsberg Property Development company.

“I think it is very healthy, to let the Carlsberg area find its new character quitely and calmly, letting people and creative ideas grow uninterupted by the normal rush of urban development, so that this new urban area slowly can become a high quality mixed use area, where all the urban quality elements can come into play.”

Read the whole enquete here (in Danish only).

Read about Gehl Architects work for Carlsberg here.

Read more about Carlsberg Byen here.

See AOK’s guide to the new cultural activities on Carlsberg here (in Danish only).

Jan Gehl on Earth Beat, Radio Netherlands Worldwide

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October 24, 2010
Cities, Public Realm
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Nearly 40 years ago, Jan Gehl, made a connection between what a street looks and feels like, and how people use it. He’s made the emphasis that we have to build cities for people for most of his career, and he joins Earth Beat host Marnie Chesterton to discuss it. The programme comes from Radio Netherlands Worldwide, and is part of a series that examines the links in the chain that tie us to our planet. What we grow, build, consume and destroy and how that cycle affects our global footprint on the world.

Listen to the discussion here. (Jan is featured in the first 20 minutes of the one-hour radio programme).

Or check into iTunes and find the programme as a podcast for free download here. (It is #2, Architecture and well-being).

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