SOLITUDE

The Skoltegrunnen and Bontelabo area are located at the north side of the entrance to Vågen. When standing at the tip of Skoltegrunnen you have full visual control over both byfjorden and Vågen. The area has for many years been a site with fish-packing, goods handling and passenger traffic as main activities.Today the area functions as Bergens main cruise ship and offshore vessel quay, appropriating approximately 1,4 km of seafront in close proximity to Bergen centrum. The building mass on land is mainly used for office space, storage and activities related to running the port/dock. As it stands today the area offers little to nothing to the inhabitants of Bergen.

Bergen City has about 20 km of seafront where only 30% of it is publicly available. The 30% or 6km of publicly available seafront is quite fragmented and it is in many places impossible to navigate along the seafront for longer stretches. A lot of the available seafront are basically just gaps between buildings. The gaps can be quite nice to walk by and look through out on the ocean, but the majority of them are not facilitated for longer stays and public life.

The core goal for this project is to give the city near seafront back to the inhabitants of Bergen and enable for urban activities along the seafront, without neglecting the importance of cruise tourism and offshore activity.