Year: 2011-2012
Location: Caen, FR
Size: 300 acres
Status: 1. prize in competition
Collaborators: IAUC, Latz, Eva le Roi

Large parts of Caen was destroyed during the second World War II and has since been rebuilt. The port project with the official title Presqu’ile de Caen is regarded as the city’s second reconstruction. The 300- acre port and industrial area consists of both closed and existing industries, the old silos, cranes, bridges and sluices are ready to be part of the new master plan. The area still quivers a little of the remaining port industry, but at the same time ready to take it. Presqu’ile means ‘almost island’ in French, and the port of Caen is also made in part of a peninsula that as an arm reaching into the city center.

The proposal for a rethinking of Caen, France, is working on a different strategy for densification. In order to meet the real demands and wishes, which is the development of the French provincial town, we created a master plan to be based on a point wise intensification of the urban situations. Spot-plan is created out of a desire to control development in phases and get the most out of each site-specific quality. The cohesion of the master plan is infrastructure and a new focus on the city’s water, as the city’s new public spaces.