BACK TO THE FUTURE

Designed by: Audun Hellemo

The recession has not only put an unprecedented number of large scale projects on hold across the world, it has also seen a vast minority of the architectural profession out of work. The urban gaps have been filled with spatial concepts made redundant by the economic crisis, however the architect’s favourite response – the tabula rasa – is not only a waste of all the time and thought that went into the development of the original concept, it also ignores the images that – helped by glossy photo-realistic renders – have formed the public imagination of the city. The idea of what could be are often more relevant and more powerful than what has been.

Back to the Future is thus an experiment where the concept of the project put on hold is recycled into a new urban space, utilizing the proposed semi-public program in a structure that could grow organically over time as the economy picks up. Unlike the proposed tower, the new structure uses programmatic compartments and spirals these in a way that creates new spatial relationships with the hole, the site and a possible integrated tower. A flexible design strategy is sought to maximize this integration, where object based “everything or nothing” strategies are abandoned in favour of a truly organic development of the site and the city.