Winner & Shortlisted announcements for WAN Waterfront, Transport

Winner & Shortlisted announcements for WAN Waterfront, Transport & House of the Year Awards 2016

Dumfries and Galloway, United Kingdom, 2016-11-17 - WAN Waterfront Award 2016, A complex challenge, executed in an elegant manner claims the Waterfront title

Congratulations to LINK Landskap. We are pleased to crown their outstanding The Waterfront Promenade at Aker Brygge as winner of the WAN Waterfront 2016 Award.

WAN Transport Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Taumanu Reserve Bridge by Isthmus Group © David St George

The WAN Waterfront Award 2016 continues to celebrate and highlight architecture that embraces and exploits the benefits of sites in proximity to water. The award aims to bring together some of the best designs and also promotes projects that address the major issue of rising sea levels, providing a global platform to showcase inspirational ‘built’ designs spanning over the past five years.

WAN Waterfront Award winner 2016
Photo credit: The Waterfront Promenade at Aker Brygge by LINK Landskap © Tomasz Majewski

Six shortlisted projects were carefully assessed by an experienced jury panel. This year’s judges were: Bryan Avery MBE, Principal at Avery Associates Architects, Richard Coutts, Co-founder of Baca Architects Ltd, Pablo Lazo, Associate Director of Urban Planning at Arup, Morten Schmidt, Partner and Co-founder of schmidt hammer lassen architects, and David Walker, Design Partner of PWP Landscape Architecture.

WAN Waterfront Award winner 2016
Photo credit: The Waterfront Promenade at Aker Brygge by LINK Landskap © Tomasz Majewski

WAN House of the Year Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Oak Pass House by Walker Workshop ©Joe Fletcher

The jury faced a difficult decision, and they considered this year’s process particularly tricky when choosing between contrasting public and private realm designs of great architectural merit. They reached the final choice based on the complexity of the challenge and the elegance of the solution, which they felt LINK Landskap fulfilled on an exemplary level.

WAN House of the Year Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Oak Pass House by Walker Workshop ©Joe Fletcher

WAN House of the Year Award winner 2016 WAN House of the Year Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Oak Pass House by Walker Workshop ©Joe Fletcher

The Waterfront Promenade breathes new life into an important centre for social interaction and activity in Oslo. David stated: “Through simple design, quality materials, and elegant details, the promenade and surrounding streets and plazas effectively connect the city to the waterfront, creating a cohesive place with a distinct, attractive identity.” The project forms part of the effort to reinvigorate Oslo’s post-industrial waterfront by creating a publically accessible promenade, connecting the city’s east and west. One of the project’s main challenges was to reconfigure and simplify the area’s cross-section to reorganise and consolidate the promenade. Richard praised the project’s success in creating a wider, more generous space, saying: “This feels like a lovely regeneration project as well as an urban intervention.”

WAN House of the Year Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Casa Caldera by DUST © ESTO, Jeff Goldberg

In order to achieve delineated areas, detailing of the granite paving received special attention throughout the entire design process. The aim was to create a robust and non-directional paving surface, with few detailed accents and no obvious, repeating patterns. Three different modules were developed and employed in order to create a legible yet seamless integration of the various pedestrian, vehicular and shared traffic zones. The paving patterns are inspired by ancient Roman paving traditions, and were redeveloped in order to meet contemporary requirements relating to mass production and installation, and Oslo’s extreme winter conditions, where temperatures can drop to below -25 degrees Celsius. Richard admired the ‘intensity’ of the paving, and the layering of the various thresholds to differentiate the areas for walking or resting. LINK Landskap also developed a site-specific concept for street furniture and ‘staying’ to encourage the role of social interaction in the public realm. Pablo described the design’s treatment of the promenade as “very pragmatically and strategically dividing it into three or four layers that bring urbanity to the water’s edge.” The jury were united in admiration for this ambitious design that results in a dynamic experience of the fjord landscape.

WAN Transport Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Taumanu Reserve Bridge by Isthmus Group © David St George

WAN Transport in Architecture Award 2016

Isthmus Group and Gottlieb Paludan Architects with COBE Architects announced joint winners of WAN Transport Awards 2016

Congratulations to the joint winners of the closely fought WAN Transport Award 2016, which once again attracted inspiring and unique projects from around the world. Isthmus Group won the award with for Taumanu Reserve Bridge in Auckland, and Gottlieb Paludan Architects and Cobe Architects joined them in first place with their design for Nørreport Station in Copenhagen.

WAN Transport Award winner 2016 WAN Transport Award winner 2016
Photo credit: Nørreport Station by Gottlieb Paludan Architects © Jens M. LindheNørreport Station by Gottlieb Paludan Architects © Jens M. Lindhe

Selected for their experience and expertise in the field of transport design, the judging panel discussed the shortlisted projects at length in order to come to a decision. This year’s jury were: Catherine Hallett, Technical Sponsor for River Crossings at Transport for London, Anthony Leslie, Vice President of HOK, Bridget Rosewell OBE, founder and senior partner at Volterra Parners, Steen Trojaborg, Managing Director and Partner at DISSING+WEITLING, and Chris Williamson, co-founder of WestonWilliamson+Partners.

The jury were pleased to crown two outstanding designs with the award.

Taumanu Reserve Bridge restores a connection to a re-imagined coastal landscape created after motorway development in the 1970s severed the local populace from the sea. To resolve the problem of a park in two parts, a bridge of sufficient form and experience was required to stitch the halves together, with a legibility that was of the park and not the motorway. Beautifully balanced and proportioned, the bridge moves into the adjacent constructed and planted landforms and abutments and is bookended by basaltic concrete panels. The jury praised the resulting seamless integration of the bridge with the landscape. Catherine said: “I think the design is innovative. It stands out, it does exactly what it says it’s going to do. It links to the beach, it looks like the beach. Beautiful to walk across, beautiful to look at, with function & form - it ticks all the boxes for me.”

Artwork on the bridge’s interior timber panelling was commissioned with guidance from the project’s Maori advisors. The resulting contemporary design was carved by machine, while in counterpoint anodized aluminium shells adorn the gateway upstands. Anthony appreciated the intricacy of the design, stating: “The detailing is fantastic. I think this project is beautiful and a very unusual and sensitive solution to a problem.”

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