Waterfront Masterplan Competition | Bodo, Norway
LimonLab
Project Team: Joaquin Fernandez Stearns, Shawn Sims, Scott Sorenson, Michael Caton



Elastic Urbanism is a competition entry for the redesign of the main harbor area in Bodo, Norway, including a library, theatre, and concert hall. The city of Bodo called for the revitalization of its’ harbor through the establishment of a cultural center. When approaching the project we looked at the existing conditions within the urban configuration, circulatory flow and the harbor configuration, and tried to find ways to extend its’ behavior and performance. With the competition seeking to establish a cultural center, one of our goals was to increase the interconnectivity of the urban zone. The three programmatic building components, the library, theatre, and concert hall, perform as a singular entity as opposed to distinctly separate objects. Two new pedestrian bridges integrate and extend the existing circulation of the pier and waterfront with the building components fusing building, landscape, and urban circulation into a continuous elastic network.



With the cultural center behaving as a singular urban construct, elements of the urban landscape and building are continuously present. Aperture, green space, and structure flow throughout the cultural center latent in varying areas and emergent in others. This further pushed our goals of developing a continuous cultural landscape where spaces, whether urban or building, are highly specific, yet are variations within a continuum.




This project has been featured in Architectural Record and can be viewed here
Disclaimer: All images and models are the property of LimonLab Architecture + Design.
Michael Caton, RA, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, CDTP