CALAMARI UNION The project responds to a new demand of making a city outside of the city. How must we design places to live in contexts not yet settled? Limen in Latin means limit, but also threshold, entrance. It is therefore in the etymology of this word that the premises are found for what can become a place of boundary, not to be intended as a barrier, but as an opportunity of connection. How are the limits of cities emancipated? Identity of living. That is the first reaction that the new settlement proposes to promote. It aims to first facilitate a sense of belonging for the inhabitants in the existing neighborhoods and then for who will live in the new settlement. This is the first objective that the neighborhood poses, using places like Port Arthur, Mantymaki and Marrti as inspiration, where spaces aided socialization between people, increasing a sense of public spirit and the pleasure of living. It is only possible through sharing to appreciate the elements of daily living: the project aims to respond to the requirements of the actual and future dwellers of Kaarninko by encouraging meetings in a series of places of varying qualities. The new settlements continue in the character of the territory regulation derived from the expansion of the city of Turku, freely defining the limits and the entrances to the pre-existing structures. From the 19th century fabric of the historic city center, the constructed development brought man to draw soft lines, nerve fibers that design a sinuous movement in the infrastructure of the landscape. Like cellular forms contain the expansion of the city, the nine constructed rings are contained in an alveolar fabric, designed out of practicable zones in soft mobility that interprets existing signs and borders in the portion of territory presently analyzed.
The new urban structure aims to go beyond classic building types designed for the suburbs, which satisfy the demands for which they were designed, in an actual reading of living. The objective is therefore to give form to a new urban, or better still rurban, density, meeting places of the city in places of nature. The project comes out of a re-reading of a Tupa, the main room of agricultural life in Finland. It was a place where the actions and time of a whole community were marked. This space elongates, curves and breaks, becoming a catalyst for the new dwellings. It is a negotiable limit that contains nature, putting man in relation with his territory. The residences establish themselves on it, attracted by the curvilinear forms that it designs. They rest on the ground like wooden sculptures, trees of architecture; like spectators in a Greek amphitheater or a reconstructed Aaltian landscape, the houses face one another figuratively beyond the strip in concrete and glass, which becomes a stage toward social living. The winding forms are at times complete and other times open or fractured and adapt themselves to pre-existing structures and topography. They recall the infinitude of the fragment and are completed by the imagination of the observer and the forest that enters inside this protected space. Therefore, the boundary becomes a generator of collective spaces; it is no longer understood as a border but as an occasion for meetings. Like the stomata, cellular structures attached to the epidermis of plants, allow a gas exchange between the inside and outside of the plant, the houses, working through the confine, acquire a double breathing; from one side, they encourage the formation of a community and from the other side, they immerse themselves in the forest offering a more intimate rapport with nature.
The constructed strips define public spaces, physically dividing the zones used by cars from protected areas. They filter the pathway from the road to the house, to the linear Tupa, to the courtyards and up to the forest; the succession of the places born from a confine enriches meeting or solitary opportunities for the future residents, responding to the debate on the changes in peri-urban areas of the city through the development of building type. The sinuous spaces are defined by glass rings and simple wooden volumes define the residences, which are taken from slight variations on a classic typological model, recalling rural Scandinavian houses. The variations on the dwelling model contribute to the development of a social sustainability, making people of different walks of life and heterogeneous nucleus live together; the prevalence of young couples will live alongside various other residents such as elderly people, large families or single persons. The meeting spaces will be of most benefit to the latter among the 102 new dwellings. The architectures are determined by a layering of common and private spaces; the forest crossed by the practicable zones encompasses the residences, which have private gardens, taking the image to the backs of the historical blocks of the urban center. The living room becomes the center of the outside, the service spaces of the house and the linear Tupa, which connects the dwellings defining furnished courtyards where nature is regulated by man's activity. On the second floor, the glass strip becomes a collective sun terrace where people can meet in a more intimate setting, sharing saunas and home offices. Modeling the archetype form of the house, the roofing is shifted and the tops of the houses staggered in the desire to design a composite skyline above the ideal foundation of the glass strip. It becomes a musical rhythm whose notes scale its staff. In these small movements, justified by reaching optimal inclinations for the installation of solar panels, there is the recognizability of the project: maintaining reduced heights for a smoother integration with the place does not mean giving up on establishing a centrality for the whole area. This tendency is expressed in the wooded area to the north of the Haritun Puistotie road where the main green area that connects Piispanristi to Skanssi meets a well-known pedestrian path. Here the trees become architecture, determining small winding empty spaces in which sculptures and small pavilions recall the curvilinear forms of the project, making up what is proposed as an entrance into a new rurban park; the forms continue, not ending in what is built, but determining a system in a single, fluid continuum. The whole intervention aims for a double valency like the house that acquires an ambivalence with regard to the landscape, trying to give shape to varying connections between man, tamed nature and the forest; it becomes the permeable shell that protects who lives in it and welcomes who enters. “The layer as a geological term/sedimentation / The layer of matter / The layer of time / The layer of thought / The layer of feeling / Die Ge shichte / Das Ge shichte / Die Einshichte”. (Heinz Tesar, A theory of layers). It is, therefore, a project of layers: stratigraphies of intimacy where the limit becomes crossable, imaginary, a line of possibility.
THE PROJECT The formation of a single solid particle, the seed of crystallization, makes up a starting point for the process of crystallization: that single entity functions as a binder, “catalyzing”the formation of a solid for subsequent growth. The intervention plants its roots in the story of Finnish and, more generally, Scandinavian residential architecture, looking from rural houses settled in agricultural tradition to elements of projects like the formal compositions of the Kingo Houses and the Fredensborg Houses designed by Jørn Utzon during the middle of the last century. References to Mediterranean houses in Tapani-talo in Turku by Alvar Aalto, the insertions of Villa Solin by Erik Bryggman and the reorganization of borders in the project for a vacation complex, Mauritzberg, in Sweden by Sverre Fehn are also used. The peculiarity of the development of contemporary living in Scandinavian countries is without a doubt the search to integrate the constructed with nature. This is attested to by the organic forms composed of pure solids in a search for an adaptation to place and context, often naturalistic, through primary forms of architecture, aiming to stimulate the spaces for socialization so important in frigid climates. The desire to develop an actual residential type is added to these premises, aiming to contribute to the research on the relationship between the landscape changes and the necessity of new installation models. How can one satisfy the housing demands of a contemporary man?
Typology The innovation with respect to conventional building types is entrusted to the linear Tupa, which elaborates on a version of the building that proposes giving each housing unit the dignity of a villa in a community system. It aims to garner the benefits of various building types together in a new form. This glass strip becomes a filter, connection and amplification, a place to live the landscape through the house; it becomes a sounding board of the living room as if it were a contemporary platform of Farnsworth House, hosting all the accessory functions such as play areas, small work stations, winter gardens and pavilions for parties and receptions. The peculiarity is always maintaining a semi-public character; every inhabitant can cross through it and share it. The space is for everyone but each person is encouraged to live it personally, through use from one's home. It is a heated portico, an amplified hallway that becomes a common living room. It connects and defines the various layers of intimacy inside the new landscape: a domestic forest. On one side, sliding glass walls allow for a view of and access to the courtyards, while the wall opposite these expands and hosts bookcases, fireplaces, benches and small tables, stimulating the desire to share free time with others. It formally converses with the constructed and with the vegetation, stopping at the ground in six of the nine rings; the glass strip sticks out of the bending limits in exchange with the residential units. It defines the condominium entrance halls and commercial spaces, physically differentiating the function of the places to live, in wood, and the public spaces, in concrete. Neighborhood services such as the café, bookshop and small stores are found in strategic points with regard to the flow of people, increasing the chances of enlivening common spaces.
Shape The icon modeling of the traditional house allows for variations on the installation model. Maintaining a uniformity of language, it ties the intervention to the pre-existing structures and recalls the forms of rural Scandinavian houses. Underneath, the layers move, characterizing the buildings that are completely overlaid in wood; the same is also used as a structural material and as a cover for houses and folding doors, contributing to the cleanliness of the dwellings' design. The houses rise over the Tupa on the inside of the courtyards and tend to become inhabited wooden sculptures, referring on the other side to the forest that surrounds them.
Housing In response to the requirements of the new reports of densification of the peri-urban areas, the intervention measures a total of 15850 m², 90% of which is made up of dwellings, 3% of commercial spaces and the remaining 7% of various supporting facilities. The target plot ratio of e = 0.35 contributes on one hand to finding a new building density combating the sensation of dispersion and on the other hand to maintaining a balance between nature and the constructed. The 88% of green area predominates the constructed, determining the possibility of letting the architectures feel embraced by a forest through new tree planting and, at the same time, taming nature in the courtyards. The houses are placed in the nine rings, three of which are continuous, three disconnected and three fractured from the borders of the site, formally differentiating themselves to respond to the varying demands of the place in which they will come up; they look for shelter where the noise of the road is most intense, opening up on the other side toward preferential views. The Tupa appears as a staff and the houses become the notes that repeat, vary and play as in a rhythmic composition. There are eight variations on the housing model, which derive from the awareness that a place becomes complete when there are different types of inhabitants who live in it. The project, therefore, foresees dwellings that house from one to five people, allotting the largest number of residences to young couples, then taking care of covering requests from inhabitants of varying ages, number of family members and walks of life.
The eight housing forms, calculated based on national statistics and competition information, range from 57 m² for a single-person home to 138 m² for a five-person home, to which the non-climate controlled areas (garage, technical room, store-room, balcony, patio) are then added. The section diversifications are added to these dimensional variations that make the area of the house measure from 5,25 x 10,5 m up to 8,25 x 11,5 m; from a minimum eaves height of approximately 5,5 m in typology B, a maximum height of 11,5 m is reached in the highest of the three typologies (A1+, A2+, B+) that salvages an inhabitable space in the attic raising the structure a half floor. This formal mixitè allows for positioning the highest buildings near the noisiest areas of the site, creating another barrier in addition to the vegetation that protects the courtyards and contributes to a rhythmic variation among the volumes. Each dwelling is layered both in a figurative sense, like a succession of common and private spaces, and in a distributive sense, designing the internal spaces with maximum orderliness and formal simplicity. An equipped wall containing the technical places for the facilities, a store-room/laundry room, a pantry and the kitchen, meets perpendicularly with the service atrium and the main stairway, creating two principal spaces. On one side, there is the garage, which is accessed directly by the practicable zones, while on the other side is the living room with a fireplace in the center. The latter opens to the search for a domestic continuity toward the Tupa and the private backyard. On the second floor, the distributive structure repeats itself with a balcony that looks onto the master bedroom and changes function according to the seasons allowing for the possibility of increasing the size of the master bedroom or gaining a home office. Like the living room connects the various first-floor settings, a patio functions as the center of the bedrooms, the private saunas and the upper walkway; this offers the possibility of a collective terrace-solarium, becoming a continuous walk between house and woods.
Rurban cells At the weaving of the landscape, the project therefore finds the solution through the design of the courtyards that offer protected spaces for domestic life and host places for socialization, while shielding from onlookers and noise. The presence of urban gardens on the inside of these forms takes off from the concept of naturbanization that must contribute to producing an ecological city managed by the citizens who can better express their own needs. This approach to the city represents a nature-country without farmers, promoting the concept of self-sustainability. The park delimited by the linear Tupa is suited to more intimate functions than the shared spaces, accommodating other than the urban gardens, squares and children's play areas, areas to relax, small greenhouses and water basins, with nature regulated according to man's requirements.
Between rings The breaks in the constructed rings allow the spaces to maintain a continuity; the most open courtyards are suited to public events while the disconnected Tupas invite one to discover the equipped square that is hidden inside them. Therefore, there is a strong difference from the public space, which is characterized on the exterior of the courtyards by practicable designs and accessory functions, such as a system of electric charging points, skis and bicycles sheds, bike paths, benches, intermittent diagonal parking spots and reserving places where snow can be dumped in the breaks in the road system. The curvilinear designs that link the dwellings are repeated on a smaller scale in pavilions scattered between the forest and the rings, that become small equipped meeting points; some form internal courtyards with trees, while the radial partitions of the bigger pavilions constitute a shelter for skis and bicycles. Appointed zones for cross-country skiing and running cross the space between the dwellings making up a network of sport paths connected to the well-known pedestrian zones.
Public outdoor area The area north of the dwellings is reached by way of an underpass on the new Haritun Puistotie road and the pedestrian crossings near the bus stops. The area attempts to seam the various existing neighborhoods, offering a point of reference to the inhabitants through the increase of outdoor activities. Between the well-known pedestrian path and the new road, small sport fields redesign the less wooded areas with small pavilions equipped with refreshment points. Continuing beyond the pedestrian path, the vegetation becomes thicker; the park becomes a forest, which is embellished by meeting points, reflection of nature and works of land art. These light architectures become colonizing elements of the territory, providing the possibility of observation points over the landscape. They visually bypass the road barrier that goes through the area. The project expands, spreading the neighboring areas with lexically similar signs, and aims to reunite the analyzed territory with elements in continuous dialog. There are several places dedicated to free time activities, both public and private, rural and urban, like an answer to the increase of time spent not working going beyond the private space in a continuous sequence: the house, the garden, the Tupa, the courtyard, the park, the forest. The inhabitant feels like he is able to create ties, symbolically taking possession of it, in the Berquian logic that says “the human habitat is always and necessarily both ecological and symbolic order. It is eco-symbol.” (Augustin Berque, Entre humains sur la terre, 1996), recognizing that nature is above all the otherness that allows for integrating urbanity.
