Phasmatodea / E13 Espoo

This master plan is the result of a study of the interaction between man and nature. Resilience, adaptability, integration, sharing and evolution: these principles are the tools of possible new scenarios and nodal points of the planning strategy.

With this project, a highly anthropic site becomes a space with regenerative possibilities, where streets, parking structures and existing built areas contributed to a process of renewal. The open space between trees, instead, is the place of adaptability: human action is mitigated in favour of a harmonious coexistence with the environment.

The equilibrium between spaces subtracted from vegetation and the reuse of previously urbanised areas produces a positive balance in favour of nature, linking parks along green corridors: the patios. In this system, designed to evolve in response to possible scenarios, the built environment behaves like a stick-bug (Phasmatodea family): it blends in, assuming the connotations of the space surrounding it.

Moving between the vegetation, voids in the volume become spaces for activities shared between different users, but also between users and nature. The building develops from the square along the current route through the park, before winding off between the trees. This offers the perception that it is concealed in nature, redesigning what is actually a manmade space.

The articulated volume breaks free from the ground, not only to conserve the open field, but also to better integrate with pedestrian and cycle paths. The street level of the “stick-building” is occupied by services (shops, minimarket, gym, sauna, multimedia rooms, music classrooms) while the upper levels host apartments, arranged around common spaces linked with patios.

Functions are arranged according to a strategy that guarantees flexible use and transformability. The university’s key functions are accessed from the south: laboratories, administrative offices and classrooms located in sculpted volumes define a new public square, relating to and integrated with a building designed by Alvar Aalto. This geometry is dominated by the volume of the cafeteria, whose entrance from Otakaari resembles a bridge leading to the apartments. Additional entrances are provided from the patio, the voids linking man and nature, accessed on foot or from the cycling path.

The selected materials respect Aalto’s exquisitely Finnish language, reworking the dialogue between brick walls and surfaces in oxidised copper cladding the belly of the building, in contrast with the green of the open field.