The Great Visby

A tall city-wall enclosing the medieval city, skeletons of ancient churches raising in the squares, an irregular maze of colorful houses shaping the urban fabric. This is the heart of Visby, narrating, through its architecture, a thousand-year-old history. Nevertheless, this narration seems to stop roughly looking outside the city-wall, where detached single-family houses, medium-intensive low-cost slabs, and qualityless malls characterize the urban landscape.
The project site is positioned in the middle of this interstitial space: a hinge place situated between the city-wall park, the mall in proximity of the Österport, and the different models of urban sprawl.
The project defines a strategy to sew up the medieval city and the outer developments through the integration and enhance, within a new mixed district, of the spatial and functional qualities of the urban fabrics currently present in Visby. The new settlement is conceived in continuity with the poetics of the old city, but still capable of accommodating comforts and qualities of contemporary architecture. A wide pedestrian area made up of squares and streets is enliven by ateliers, studios, restaurants, cafes, and shops. Housing develops on this plinth, facing both the bustling public space and the private quiet roof gardens of the courtyards.