OPENING 59° 39´ N, 25° 42´ E

Close to Tallinn, in the middle of a picturesque Lahemaa National Park, there is a small port city called Loksa. Despite the fact that it has superb spatial qualities and a marvellous location, people are leaving, socioeconomic situation is poor and overall condition stagnated. Very little to no cooperation with surrounding communities takes place and the area seems to be encapsulated. Looks like 50 years of Soviet era has put the city on a sleep mode. Therefore, the main goal of the project was to define and open up the potentials of the area via transboundary spatial aproach and networking.

While dealing with spaces, wider perspective is usually needed. In this project I was looking space through 4 type: real, conventional, impact and perceptional spaces and put an extra focus on border situations. Harsh edges lead into segregation while overlapping border-zones tend to encourage interaction. Mediating qualities of rooms became imortant. Based on previous, the focus area of the project was defined wider than the city of Loksa, including also Lahemaa National park (scale up) and Port of Loksa (scale down). Concentrating on seascape became as important as landscape. Focus area was then placed in a wider context of the Baltic Sea Region, Central Baltic Sea and Finnish coast area. As an outcome, 6 visions were made, each in every scale: V1. Tallinn-Helsinki-Lahemaa cluster is a versatile core area in the Baltic Sea region; V2. Lahemaa-Loksa, as a part of Tallinn-Helsinki Lahemaa cluster, is highly evaluated nature core area in the Central-Baltic region; V3. Lahemaa-Loksa is one of the main sea-land nature and cultural heritage site on Finnish coast area; V4. Lahemaa sea-land cluster; V5. Opening Loksa to the sea and making new connections with Lahemaa; V6. Opening 59°39´N, 25°42´E - making the port partially public, while keeping the industrial part alive. Based on visions, 4 planning options (Openings) were made. The main intervention was to redefine, shift and open up the border areas of the port, do it in a flexible manner and gain maximum outcome with a minimal input. As a conclusion, understanding the wider context, thinking over the borders and opening up an existing potentials of space, like done in this work, seems to be one of the most natural ways of making things better.