Vila Olimpica: al mar

About the Barcelona Olympic games is the one of the most interesting things for me. Because I think without the Olympic games, Barcelona did not grow to this big city as a tourism. I think it was one of the biggest turning points for Barcelona. And also these kind of projects are for the big festival for human and after the

festival ends it starts to have a different meaning. Or sometime it becomes a dead space. And considering about this area, I think we could not forget about the sea. From my point of view, some of the places in this area show a strong connection between the identity of the present Barcelona.

Because of the reforming of the sea side, I think the tourism culture grew up big. But to have more stronger connection, I think the transportation is not enough. Still the center part or an old city part of Barcelona have more strong relationship with the citizens and with the neighbor area. And the places and the buildings exist individually and after the Olympic games has finished it is hard to see the connection between them.

　　　　

Japan is a country surrounded by the sea, so there are many projects and inventions, histories around the sea.

But in Tokyo, I cannot pick up one of the similar projects. So I would like to choose one of the nearest cities of Tokyo which is Yokohama. This city is also well known in Japan and have a lot of histories related to the sea side.

This project, Minato Mirai 21(means "Harbor Future 21") is a large urban development. This project was planned to reform the center part of Yokohama. This part used to be shipbuilding place and the freight depots. Also this was a plan for Tokyo. With this project, they tried to ease the heavy concentration of business and population in Tokyo. So not only reforming this site, they also connected the transportation to the traffic of Tokyo.

←railway of Tokyo

↑railway around Yokohama(easy to connect from Tokyo)

In this project, many things were planned new. They placed some business districts and also residential spaces too. So this place was created as another brand new city for both visiting and living. Offices, parks, museums, hotels, hospitals, streets and so on. This project has been started since 1983 and still continuing. Now people live in Tokyo even visit this place. And the biggest reason is this place is located by the sea.

　
↑Yokohama 1960s ↑Yokohama 2010

The meaning of the project is different from Vila Olimpica, but I think the urban scale reforming of the sea side will be the strong connection to the neighborhoods. Maybe Vila Olimpica is not working as a perfect connecion but still it is an entrance for the sea side and I think all of the things are not wasted. And having some connection with the natural environment element, architecture will be necessary between human and the nature.