The participants presented the sketch masterplan to representatives of the site owners and the local authority planners, who expressed great interest in the ideas generated.   As a result of this interest the sketch plans were reviewed in October and further development undertaken on the proposal in December 2002.   INTBAU secretary Dr Matthew Hardy and Susan Parham, a director of CAG Consultants, London were asked to undertake a detailed review of the initial masterplan proposal.   Both had been contributors to the early stages of the Fredrikstad Summer School.   This report details the refinements made in producing the draft master plan.

The preliminary masterplan from the Fredrikstad charrette held in July 2002

External expert review - key points

Initial commentary was provided by external assessor, architect and INTBAU Chair, Robert Adam, and later by urban designer and director of The Prince's Foundation's Urban Programme, Paul Murrain.

The scheme was generally considered to be an excellent contribution to the thinking about the site, and reflects the result of a process including public consultation (a public design "Charrette") and intensive work over a short period by the participants.   The critique provided below was made within the context of general appreciation of the excellent work done by the participants.   Below, their few criticisms are documented as these provided the basis for the modifications made during the production of the developed plan.

Key points from Robert Adam (right) were:

The area around the harbour appeared too large and should be reduced in scale to work as an urban space.

The roads in general could be made narrower, especially the proposed main road.

Some blocks to the north west of the site needed to be resolved and made smaller.

Key points from Paul Murrain were:

The commercial centre as shown was not quite in the optimal place.   The centre should be located on the main circulation route which itself needed to be rethought to increase connectivity.

The public spaces were too large to be workable, enclosed places.

Active frontages were needed on both sides of the road in the main centre of activity.

The area on the harbour would be too inhospitable in winter to work as shown.   It needed to be more sheltered for climatic reasons and due to its relatively low catchment potential.

Too much of the site - using a standard pedestrian catchment of a five-minute (400m) walking time - was inaccessible or too distant.   This has implication on the need to rethink placement of the main street layout and commercial centre.

 

Principles governing the developed masterplan design

The developed masterplan design produced in London in December 2002

An intensive review of the sketch masterplan was undertaken in Oslo in early October by Arne Sødal (right), Matthew Hardy and Susan Parham.   In producing the developed masterplan in London in December, we incorporated the comments made by the expert reviewers and established the following organising principles:

A key issue is to make the area work economically.   The scheme must be configured to provide the most viable plan possible within the terms of sustainability and good urban design.   The changes proposed flow from that assumption.   Given its very large land area, and the likely pace of development need for the site in the city and subregion, the development needs to be approached in a staged way.

It is important to create a design that provides for an intense commercial centre with ‘active frontages’, and avoid a land use mix that dissipates centre uses.   The road and block pattern should support the creation of an economically viable commercial centre.

The site provides exciting opportunities for harbour front housing to cater for the local and Oslo housing markets: on a sheltered canal, on south facing semi-public harbour frontages, with long gardens to the north shore, all with privately accessible boat moorings which are likely to make these housing types particularly saleable.

The densities, heights and housing types should respond to the urban design potential of the site and provide a range of alternatives in line with local demography and housing preferences.   Housing should range from harbour front apartments through tenements, to single family housing in groups around courtyards or on separate plots.   The site offers opportunities to develop a range of sustainable wooden house typologies.

The development as a whole should be designed to:

- Maximise views to the sea

- Preserve vistas along existing crane tracks to the historic shipbuilding cranes

- Create publicly accessible water edge promenades (located along existing wharf edges)

- Create a centrally located retail node within walkable distance of the majority of the site

- Preserve existing landmark industrial heritage buildings and structures

- Place housing blocks to maximise water views to the west and north and solar access to the south and west.

The large industrial heritage buildings should be left reserved for a range of land uses that could include innovative office developments.   These should use ecological design principles.   The buildings, 22 metres wide, are unlikely to be suitable for housing.   Given their very large size an create substantial shadows and the large shaded spaces to the north and east will not be suitable for housing development.

Key features of the masterplan

Movement, Connectivity and Permeability

The primary movement corridor and intersections have been located in line with ‘Space Syntax’ assumptions about the movement economy.   The corridor thus responds to the areas where most movement is likely to occur.   The design should be tested by Space Syntax analysis before implementation.

The large number of commuters travelling between Oslo and the Hvaler Islands, which creates traffic congestion problems for the Fredrikstad city centre, also provides great opportunities to activate commercial uses on the FMV site in the long term when a proposed linking bridge and road are built.   However, plans for the FMV site cannot assume the existence of this bridge in the near future.   Accordingly, the road network has been designed to allow for movement during the initial phase with access from the west only, and for north-south movement in the future when the road and bridge links are built.   Changes have been made in order to increase permeability and connect more closely to the regional, subregional and local road network, allowing for a range of future possibilities.

The bridge link is proposed to be in the originally envisaged location to allow for the create of active frontage adjoining the existing buildings on the northern waterfront.   This move also improves the potential for connection of the site street network to the subregional network to the south.   As well as contributing to overall connectivity and legibility, it has also provided the opportunity to create a street with active uses on both sides - vital for a functioning town centre.

In order to support retail viability and pedestrianisation, more access points have been created along the main active street frontages.   Greater permeability in this area is important to the economic and social vitality of the centre.

Many roads have been narrowed - bringing them into line with traditional urban road dimensions in Fredrikstad.   This will improve the sense of enclosure of these streets when taken in conjunction with building typologies proposed.   Together these will create appropriate height-to-width ratios on all streets.

The movement network has been redesigned to allow increased vehicular permeability and legibility while retaining a pedestrian-oriented promenade at the water’s edge.

The ferry stop has been moved to a location more accessible from the river, near the western end of the old dry dock.

Improvements in connectivity will heighten the potential to attract one or more bus routes to the redeveloped area.

Housing and Other Land Uses - Block Sizes and Density

Block sizes - both retail and residential - have been made smaller, especially in and around the centre, to promote a fine grain and high intensity of active uses.

Block sizes have been based on the need to promote a variety of timber-framed house typologies on site.   Blocks are now of appropriate size to accommodate a range of sizes and styles of housing based on a realistic assessment of both local and Oslo housing markets.

The principles governing the existing block formation for the north east corner of the site have been accepted as proposed, with some rationalisation of block size and layout.

Specific locations, grain, scale and densities for mixed use have been further developed including retaining a proposed school and relocation of the football oval to integrate with that development.

Overall density has been increased, to improve the urbanity, vitality and economic viability of the proposed centre.

Some service, commercial and industrial land uses have been retained or proposed in suitable locations.

Existing Heritage and Other Buildings

The road layout and block pattern, and the site density and land use patterns, have been designed around existing heritage industrial buildings.   They now create landmarks or vista termination points in the urban design scheme.

Other existing buildings, which house existing economic uses or present the possibility of economic use in future, have been retained in the design.

Access to Water

A widened canal (refer to drawing) provides more opportunities for boat mooring associated with individual dwellings, improving amenity and increasing the desirability of this housing and the viability of the development.

Similarly, in order to improve the economic viability of the redevelopment, the revised plan has maximised the amount of harbour frontage housing with private boat mooring.

A continuous promenade at the water’s edge has been maintained around the perimeter of the site where existing wharf edges make this possible.   Unconsolidated water frontages have been devoted to private waterfront housing.

The design of promenades and harbour frontages favours the desirable southern and western frontages and existing wharf edges.

Harbour Frontages and Green Spaces

Green spaces and harbour frontages have been reinforced and enclosed to create a more urban feeling.

Staging of the development

The revised proposal drawing shows how redevelopment could be staged to allow establishment of the central part of the site relying only on access from the west.   Development of the more remote northern and western areas is assumed to become possible only with construction of one or more of the north-south road links.

The centre has been placed to reflect staging possibilities related to the changes in site access over time.

Development Typologies and Coding

Information in the form of a set of building typologies and a coding matrix will be provided.   It is intended to ‘code’ the FMV site as a wooden city for reasons of sustainability and in line with Norwegian national policy on timber use.   Use of timber can be justified not only on the grounds of sustainability but in order to relate to the history of the use of timber for housing in the area and the site’s own history as a local industry connected to timber.

Timber buildings are also highly portable and allow for more intensive development in the distant future without high demolition costs.   The proposal fits within the long tradition in Norway of moving buildings to new sites.

Fredrikstad Regional Strategy - Linkages

The site constitutes a major, strategic land asset for Fredrikstad. In order to support the redevelopment of this brownfields site it also needs to be supported by relevant policies in the General Plan.   The General Plan currently allows for development of a number of greenfields areas at some distance from central Fredrikstad which we argue would undermine successful use of the FMV site.

First, greenfields development where brownfields are left undeveloped cannot be justified on grounds of sustainability which is best achieved by a more compact, contiguous urban form.

Second, we assume that substantial infrastructure costs would be associated with development of these zoned areas for future housing as they are distant from existing urban edges and infrastructure connections.

Third, their distance from the urban centre means they would be difficult to serve with public transport making them inherently car dependent.

Fourth, their development would also undermine the economic viability of the site as providing a substantial housing alternative, thus wasting a key urban development opportunity.

We propose that to support the renewal of the FMV shipyard, the municipality considers freezing the proposed outer suburban greenfield housing areas shown on the general plan.   It should maintain a strong green belt around the built up area and look to locate as much new development as possible on areas such as the FMV shipyard before sanctioning development on more distant locations.

Susan Parham and Matthew Hardy
October 2002

Further Information

If you are interested in finding out more about the Fredrikstad charrette, please visit the Byens Fornyelse website or contact one of the organisers:

Audun Engh
INTBAU Scandinavia
Email audun.engh@gmail.com
Tel +47 9262 2626
Fax +47 2236 3720

Dr Matthew Hardy
Secretary, INTBAU
19-22 Charlotte Road
London EC2A 3SG
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7613 8520
Fax: +44 (0)20 7613 8599

© INTBAU 2001-8