Kera street pavilion and Future Street

Kera’s street pavilion was built as the entrance / landmark building for the Kera New Street -exhibition / pilot in the summer of -22 . The pavillion offers six to ten seats for unformal gatherings. It serves as an information centre, a place of sitting and rest, a nearby library and a rain shelter. The structures have been designed to be deconstructed and reused.

Building using recycled materials

The pavilion is designed to be deconstructed and reused. All the joints are mechanical. The longer pieces of timber were recycled from a close by bridge construction site. The shorter pieces have served as packing material. The glass structures are from a demolished office building in Kilterinkuja, Vantaa.

The street experiment in Espoo Kera was done under human and nature conditions. Developed a new type of street, a block street, is dedicated to movement, play and lingering. The aim is to find the best and most fun ways to live, move and enjoy the outdoors through various experiments.

Instead of having been banned, the street users and residents were expected to bring brand new content to the street environment. The previously empty, asphalt-gray passive street space was turned into a year-round, colorful, green, diverse and active street space. New innovations emerged on the basis of new technologies and the circular economy.

Streets play an essential role in our cities’ landscapes and experienced livability. However, street spaces have remained mostly unchanged for the last 100 years; during this time, the street was primarily for traffic, for cars and goods.

The challenges of the 21st century regenerate our streets, too. Pedestrian and bicycle mobility need an increasing amount of space, but also the fight against climate change, changes in weather patterns as well as biodiversity loss requires us to plant more trees, meadows and blossoming plants along our streets.

Future streets are places of meeting and activities for people of all ages. Our nearest environment is the street in front of our home and in the future there will be more room for lingering, sitting around, playing and having fun. Our aging population especially needs home streets that invite and attract people to get up and get out!

Kera #newstreet is a glimpse into the future. The Kera street of tomorrow is an experimental and a spatial entity that invites people to experience and envision future streets along with the solutions needed to implement them.

Future streets are multifunctional, variable and resilient environments that scale and adapt to different conditions. Kera #newstreet is a platform for experiments: it presents new technologies, spaces for lingering and playing, solutions to enhance biodiversity and new possibilities created by the circular economy.

Future streets – parts of the concept

Small things are important in the future streets. People will play the main role and the streets will create more life, energy and greenery, as well as leave a positive mark on the person. The planning hierarchy will shift, creating more surprising uses for streets and improving their carbon sequestration capacity by adding more trees and greenery.

The scale of future streets is based on a human step and the foliage of a tree. The aim of a one-minute city and 95 cm city where the urban scale is based on the children’s experience. The aim is also to enhance self-sufficiency in food and energy. Street trees with long life-span cool the streets down during hot summers and the wild urban nature forms a habitat for insects and small birds.

Future streets as scenery / the choreography of new street

Speed limits will turn into slowness incentives in the future streets. People and nature along with their versatile needs act as the choreographers of mobility. Decreased traffic speeds foster safety while the uses and usability of streets are transformed.

30 km/h Neighborhood street

Bicycles, cars and logistics safely use the same shared lane.

20 km/h Block street

Walking and cycling are prioritized over car traffic in the block street. Cars give way to others and wait for the street to clear. Block street is apt for brisk movement.

10 km/h Pedestrian street

Movement in the pedestrian street follows walking speed. Little children play the main role while they are learning to ride a bicycle.

5 km/h Lingering and playful street

Movement nearly halts in the lingering and playful street and is replaced by sitting around, reading, socializing and wondering. Lingering and playful streets are also a zone for games and playing.