The Lesiure Harbor ( Linked platforms )

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YAC Competition ( Leisure Harbor ) - Honorable mention

Year: 2021
Type: Rebirth / Masterplan
Location: Loano - Italy
Status: Unrealized Concept

Team: Waleed Gamal Lotfy - Haytham Salah Ali - Moustafa Alaa El Din - Hesham Emam Ali - Mohamed Ali Salih

The challenge of vitalizing Loano harbor lies in attracting different user groups (city inhabitants and tourists) to visit, socialize and enjoy its new facilities. Provision of a diversified spectrum of attractions is then vital to engaging them to the harbor. Being the gateway to several coveted Mediterranean coastlines, we aim at transforming the harbor into a cultural exchange node that focuses on and enriches humanistic experience. A place that reconnect people away from the regular prevailing virtual social networking platforms. It is assumed that Loano harbor suffers a multi-faceted but not well connected facilities, consequently, the design intent is to intensify its social & economic role as the main contemporary image of Loano city.

Inter-connectivity - the main scheme of the design concept - was the issue that encountered the design. Speaking of which, the design proposes a museum-like spatial experience that engages with the Invasive element of the harbor (Yacht) in several ways. One of which is the path that descends gradually from the grading level of the harbor until being below the main route of the yachts. Alike the tunnel found in aquariums, users can experience yachts from below, by passing through a grand Plexiglas-roofed tunnel that spans 40 m long and at 4 m deep under the water level at the harbor yacht’s gate. This tunnel offers a unique spatial experience as it gradually descends under water level. This experience stimulates several senses (visual and hearing). The sound associated with the waterfall happening at the two edges of thetunnel will inform about the yacht’s activity of the entire port.