urban sequence_trieste_cruiser terminal_nss::.

As we already know ports are points of convergence between two domains of freight circulation; the land and maritime domains. The term port comes from the latin “portus”, which means gate or gateway. Ports are boind by the need to serve ships, and so access to to navigable water has been historically the most important site consideration.
The traditional function of such an urban gateway is to mark a threshold between the inhabitants of the city and the visitors traveling by sea. Similarly, port terminals historically symbolize a doorway to the city with a planar face that is neither part of the urban fabric nor part of the aquatic landscape beyond.
The project will try to provide a more continuous sequence rather than an abrupt transition between the land and sea by occupying the threshold and stretching the duration of arrival along the entire length of the pier.
This extension will establishes a gradual transition from the city and its landscapes to the sea and offers multiple opportunities to mix both visitors and citizens. The project will captures the streams and flows of passengers and citizens in a dynamic mixture. It is not a vertical threshold that occurs abruptly but a horizontal duration of space and time between city and garden.
The transition occurs in two directions along the pier, the first from the sea into the city–which defines the port–and the second from the city to the water–which defines the garden. Each is spatially defined as a distinct tube that unrolls and flattens into a surface.
Upon arrival from the sea, a passenger passes through the volume of the terminal which gradually becomes the surface of the plaza. Like wise, the citizen arrives in an enclosed garden whose natural terrain unfolds into the sea as a surface. Because these sequences are passing through one another, the passengers arriving to the city of Trieste are experiencing the citizens garden. Similarly the citizens share in the experience of transportation.
The project intermingles these two passages, so that one is always participating in aspects of both simultaneously.
The architecture of this relationship of spaces is inherently topological. Because surfaces must transform into volumes, the materials and spaces must be able to mediate between degrees of interior and exterior in a fluid and continuous manner.
The project will be considered as an extension of the city floor, and will create a continuous sequence of public space with Trieste main plaza