Wayfinding in Redi

Wayfinding in Redi

The winning competition proposal for ameliorating wayfinding problems in the Redi Shopping Centre was based on an urban planning paradigm.

The new Redi Shopping Centre in Kalasatama, Helsinki, has been plagued by problems of customers getting lost in its winding corridors and two distinct but spatially similar parts separated by a street. To address these concerns, the shopping centre’s management organized a much publicised design competition to harvest ideas for a solution. Our (with Jori and Pauliina Grym) proposal received the shared grand prize in Spring, 2019.

As the centre’s original architectural concept was based on the non-rectilinear, organically grown centres of ancient Italian towns, I thought it appropriate to base the solution on urban planning, namely Kevin Lynch’s 1960s work on city-dwellers’ mental mapping of their surroundings.

Instead of a single gesture, the proposal included a series of improvements including, e.g.:

The proposal is in Finnish. Translation available on request.