The Nolli Gardens | Europan 13
New centre for Kortephoja, Jyväskylä (FI)
by Freyke Hartemink, Jarrik Ouburg, Maciej Abramczyk
The project includes a new urban plan and addition of two mix-use housing blocks for a part of the modernistic neighbourhood called Kortephohja in Jyväskylä, a medium-sized town (135.000 inhabitants) centrally located in Finland.
The challenge of the project is how to create an attractive local centre whereby the physical buildings themselves form the catalyst for the social integration of different target groups as students, families and elderly people. Whereby communities become self–reliant and self–organising and whereby buildings form small villages in a network that we call the city.
We propose to invert the classic modernistic scheme of the original urban scheme. It is the public space that shapes the buildings in stead of the other way around.
In 1784 Giambattista Nolli drew a map of the city of Rome that was revealing. Normally plans showed the built and the unbuilt space, the private and the public. Nolli presented the enclosed public spaces, such as the interior of the Pantheon, as open civic spaces. For a community exactly these open and shared spaces offer inhabitants a mutable appropriation.
The three Student Village residential buildings will be replaced by one 4-5 story student building enclosing a communal square. On every level the communal corridor is interrupted by the shared ‘Nolli Gardens’, breaking the long vista, and adding surprise and social interaction to the common space. These spaces are programmed with a collective dining room with kitchen, winter garden, lounge area, library, sauna etc.
The building for the elderly is a 3 story building that encloses a square on which a new supermarket and restaurant will be located. This ensemble will create the central block for the neighbourhood. All the apartments have a double orientation, facing both the street and the communal space that doubles as the access to the apartments.
Europan 13 competition: 2015, first prize
Client: City of Jyväskylä, The Student Union of the University of Jyväskylä JYY, NCC Group
Student housing block: 124 family apartments, 240 single room apartments, commercial and service units, bicycle parking and shelters (total 17.840 m2)
Central block: 76 elderly apartments, supermarket, restaurant, 420 parking places (total: 7.428 m2)
Execution urban plan: 2016, Buildings: 2017-
Team: Freyke Hartemink, Jarrik Ouburg and Maciej Abramczyk
