Design Based Waterfront Development

Abstract
At the urban scale the harbour is a grandiose meeting between the town and the sea, representing an interesting interface between the local life and the big world. Here we still have a great variety of old and new architectural typologies. This scenery calls for quality. The waterfront is a common gift for all citizens and it has been the gateway for hopes for a better life and a meeting place between “tradition” and “the new”. Waterfront redevelopment inside cities should focus on this great narrative! The waterfront is the most fantastic interface between nature and man-made world – and it should treated as a life-giving zone composed by a great variety in the future use, by meeting places for all, and finally give room for architectural experiments and arts. We are talking about ‘Harbourscapes’. Thus in this article ‘Harbourscape’ is concept for waterfront re-development i cities. It is an approach towards different design-based development methods which can be tested with the purpose of developing new designs for the relationship between the city and the water, and in addition to generate easily grasped images of a coherent harbour transformation.

The focus in the article is on methodology, concept development and communication during the process provide the basis for the proposal of some principles in water front development.

The lessons learnt in the course of these workshops indicates that
• comparable methodological achievements require a consistent line of analytical skill as well as a high level of design skills in the professional approach;
• Design-based development can make an independent contribution to the visioning process on concepts for urban development, city life planning and landscaping.
• It has to be based on a an independent evaluation and discourse analyses in the regeneration of the harbour; and a combination of methods and approaches are to be used.

An overall professional learning on water front development is that the planning politics and administrative procedures should have strong focus on:
• problems that have to do with privatisation of harbour areas;
• mixed use along the waterfront;
• design quality in the public domain using ‘city life planning’ methodologies;
• industrial heritage should not only be viewed as a question of preservation;
• the scale and the typologies from the industry form a fantastic catalogue of interesting typologies useful for new developments as well;
• temporal use and week planning are useful tools in sustainable long term development of water fronts.