Kaarina Center Competition

The Town of Kaarina organized an architectural competition for its new center. We teamed with Echo Urban Design, Raivio Bumann and Finchbuildings to develop a concept that integrates the forest biome and social fabric into inner-city development for small and medium-sized cities. This medium-sized city (30,000 inhabitants) is in the Turku agglomeration on the west side of Finland. The center is currently dominated by car usage, parking lots, and infrastructure, giving it an abandoned and undefined impression. The city hall, library, and various supermarkets are lost in space.

By introducing forestation to the flanks of the center and organizing the city further with a strongly branched and connected outdoor space around central areas, we establish connections with the newly planned light rail on the south side and connect with newly introduced parking hubs on the north side. This creates a car-free city center with a human scale, pleasant spaces, and identity-filled locations, providing space for new (collective) and social housing forms, spaces for entrepreneurs, stimulate experiments, and create places for learning and exposing.

The city center can be realized in wood, thereby becoming carbon neutral. By choosing a combination of modular construction and partially traditional construction, any possible form can be realized. By applying a maximum of 5 layers, we ensure the human scale, as well as construction speed and the possibilities of modular and wooden construction. We are looking forward to further developing our concept and taking steps in the coming years to transform other small and medium-sized, automobile-oriented cities into a sustainable, socio-ecological future.