Contemporary Port-scapes: urban design analyses and strategies

The project examines and designs for contemporary port-scapes in Denmark, developed through MA2 Urban Architecture 2021.
It maps and analyses a set of case sites, herein the material-spatial configuration and manifestations of externalities, flows, activities and site-specific interrelationships between harbours, towns, and landscapes

- See MAPS & ANALYSES posters from 18th March to the right-

In close observance of the insights cultivated in the site analysis, the project develops site-specific design scenarios for the port sites.

Four ports are selected as the case sites for analysis and design scenario development: Aalborg, Esbjerg, Grenaa, and Hirtshals.

The extensive Danish coastline is dotted with small and medium-sized harbours. Key activities in each of these harbours vary; based on combinations of, e.g., fishery, local, national or inter-national transportation of goods and people on land and at sea, recreational facilities, offshore activity, and industrial production on land. While to various degrees, these harbours and the activities that shape and sustain them, are embedded in their urban and landscape localities - developed through close interrelationships with site-specific conditions of the sea and of the land, and interwoven with local economies and communities – they are also material manifestations of links to elsewhere and global production and consumption flows. They are national and regional nodes in mobility networks of trade and flows, manifesting as ’moorings’ of building and infrastructure at local sites.