URBAN ISOSTASY, Helsinki (Finland), 2007

Client : City of Helsinki
Team : TAKTYK
Program : Prospective Urban Study
Location : Helsinki (Finland)
Surface Area : N/A
Cost : N/A
Date : Competition 2007

Urban Isostasy is a vision anticipating future changes (2050) in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

Isostasy is defined as an equilibrium in the earth’s crust such that the forces tending to elevate landmasses balance the forces tending to depress landmasses. This geological phenomenon serves us a conceptual base for the urban mutation of the city. The natural up-thrust of the land could be transformed into an artificial and mechanical movement. This action will transform the city and colonize the sea by creating urban islands, artificial tectonic plates. As an artificial system of tectonic plates, The city is now seen as a an urban archipelagos. A new Helsinki has been invented, from land to water.

The aim is to reinvent, through various existing urban archipelagos, and a new centrality in the Baltic. This vision of the the city is not embodied in a static entity (center-periphery) but rather, in a string of new urbanity .
This research starts with 2 main questions : How to handle urban growth ?
How to avoid urban sprawl of single familly houses ?

Our strategy suggests that the future need for 70 millions of new constructed floor areas can be accommodate into a new compact city.
By selecting new set of localities, we define urban entities with already a strong entities.

These territories are following the ring structure of the city infrastructures.
Zone 1 : RING CITY the end of the city is seen as a transition between nature and suburd
Zone 2 : LINEAR CITY this urban axis is seen as a passage between nature, country side, economical zones, airport, historical city and the baltic sea.
Zone 3 : SHORE CITY
The shore is seen a balcony on the Baltic sea.