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hamar norway hamar norway rail_town rail_tow
BETWEEN TOWNSCAPE AND LAKESCAPE SCALES
Urbanity in Norway seems imperative, particularly in the railway city of Hamar where its infrastructure appears as an unsolvable obstacle rather than urban potentiality. Hamar is hanging from the Scanrail network and place a strategic communicational role. It is part of the Dovre Line, a line between Oslo and Trondheim through the Gudbrandsdal valley.
1. Link between the downtown and the waterfront, thus get ride of the railway barrier, and 2. Creation of elastic residential tissue which can environmentally reclaim the quality of the existing railway void: a fickle territory. It also establishes a domestic scale agreeable with the dwellers.
THE EQUATION
The project valorizes the disused railway zone by formulating a paradigmatic equation: an urban interface that combines a cultural gate which connects the city and lake, and mobile one or two stories dwellings along the railways. It is a smart urban strategy.
LINK
The RAIL BRIDGE is an external device which is strategically plugged in the Hamar’s hardcore. Its aim is to restore and improve the existing dysfunctional connectivity. The RAIL BRIDGE is capable to offer a compact programmatic menu, by providing several uses such as transporting, commercial and cultural ones. It gathers a mixed use program consisting of a new railway station, bus stop, library and bookshops; concert hall, conference rooms and cinemas; galleries and booths along a mechanical loop. The escalator is the main organizer of flows from the car park level to the panoramic roof.
XL-BALCONY
Therefore, the RAIL BRIDGE the appears as a XL-BALCONY, a massive structure capable to capture the immensity of the natural surrounding and the foreground of Mjøsa Lake, the trains’ flows and the city’s silhouette.
INFRAESTRUCTURE AS BIGNESS
It is a large scale building which can be compare with the dimensions of the Vikingskipet hall or the municipal stadium. The density and variety of uses that take place in it, allows combining and overlapping local and global activities, permanent and temporary ones and establishing an appropriate urbanity that occurs by accepting the Hamar’s infrastructural nature.
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The RAILWAY DWELLINGS’ residential tissue is an elastic self-ruling entity. It is organized as a CLUSTER and performs as a sponge or hearth, and its porosity and sizes vary according to the breathing’s rhythm.
If appear a guest or a new infant or if the occupants shrink, there is always a dwelling unit and furniture that can be plugged in or unplugged as well. If temporary a resident leave the neighborhood, the unit can be leased, sublet; also stored, fixed or refurnished until the next season. In addition, if the residents own the units, they can freely move out with them to somewhere along the railway!
CLIMATIC DESIGN
A setting of see-trough panel (i.e.: polycarbonate boards, 2panels glazed windows, etc) and opaque boards (lightweight and well insulated) are climatically overlapped along the walls in order to achieve an efficient indoor thermal comfort in each day and season. The outer skill is a glazed surface. The variation of thickness and material changes in the skin is manually made, by sliding up or down, left or right; inside or outside. In addition, a sliding and collapsible shading device is put aside the longitudinal faรงade to control.
SMALLNESS
The RAILWAY DWELLINGS represent the smallness. An movable array of the houses, their outdoor furniture, sport fields, their interaction of greenhouses with snow, plants or trees, etc.; create by traces and footprints of RAILTOWN the human scale of this mobile village: an artless way to URBANIZING WITH INFRASTRUCTURE. They are small size dwelling and appear like ‘boxes freely spread under the main dining table’. The base modules are 3.20 meters width times 15.00 meters length time 2.65 meters height each one and they are disseminated along the existing railways. This new neighborhood-on-wheels utilizes the existing railways as base support of its housing strategy. This simple fact allows conceiving it as an organic urban tissue, constricted or extensible, but 100% adaptable.
SLIDING PREFABRICATION
The RAILWAY DWELLINGS can be easily hauled by road and over water. The residential units consist of several prefabricated modules that glide one over one, following the railways. Each module is designed and sized according to the NSB wagon’s chassis. The wall frame is design to hang down and slide the skin that structures the indoors and outdoors membranes and openings by using smart materials. The interior consists of a single basic elongated volume that can be divided by using a transparent or opaque sliding partitions and panels.
To navigate in this project as a visitor, it is important to underscore certain keywords:
RAILTOWN IS A GAME
which is self-governed by the climatic change and the fluctuating housing stock of the region. It is also a comedy. Most of its playful properties have been taken as inspiration from the comedy ‘One Week’ (USA 1920, 27 min), led and produced by Buster Keaton.
RAILTOWN IS AN ORGANISM
a sort of sponge. It absorbs or emits solar energy by sliding the housing units and solar collectors. If you look at the housing layout, it operates by contractions and dilatations according to the weather condition and the indoor thermal comfort by the occupants.
RAILTOWN IS MOVABLE
which does not need any pedestal or complicated foundation. It is restless organism which changes functions, users, skins and biotextures as well. The housing units and thermal buffers are set up on wheels.
RAILTOWN IS EASY –TO-MAKE
It is a prefab urban tissue which use the standardized wagon chassis and is inserted a steel prefabricate frame on it. On the houses roof, a grass layer is established to improve the indoor insulation and generate family green terraces and gardens in summertime. In terms of solar gain, the openings are fully facing south and the greenhouses perform as ‘solar collectors’.