Kouvola Centre Development

Masterplanning & Urban Design Competition, honorable mention

Kouvola is a city of approximately 80.000 inhabitants in south eastern Finland. It is an important railway junction and straddles the railway from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. This competition focused on finding strategies to revitalize the centre of the city. The main features of the plan are three new urban nodes located along the main axis of the city: an improved railway station area with a new travel centre in the south, a redeveloped central square, canopy and a market hall in the middle and a cultural node centered around the city hall and an old school building in the north. The plan is based on carefully thought interventions and limited infill building on the existing assets of the city instead of heavy-handed building or demolition.