Permeability of Waterfronts—Contemporary Approach in Designing Urban Blue Spaces

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper “Porosity of waterfronts. Contemporary approach in designing urban blue spaces” addresses a very interesting and relevant issue relating to the increasing challenges of how to adapt to sea level rise and flooding, when designing public spaces in the urban land-sea interface. The authors present four illustrative examples of the ongoing transformation of urban waterfronts into multi-functional blue spaces, where nice user experiences are combined with a flexible design adapting to the water level and mediating between land and sea.  

In the introduction, it is stated by the authors, that,
“The aim of the paper is to indicate a new approach in designing public spaces at the sea-land interface by presenting a comparative study of the design solutions used in case of the four selected study cases: sea organs in Zadar (Croatia), Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo (Norway), Coastal public sauna Löyly in Helsinki (Finland) and Tel Aviv's Central Promenade Renewal (Israel). The studied examples originating from recent years (from 2005 to 2018) and take into account the permeability of the waterfronts and the flow of people”

The paper is well-structured as such, but the description of the methodological approach is not sufficient.
Especially, a more in-depth presentation of the background material leading to the typology is lacking, an extensive analysis of case studied are mentioned but no results are presented, and other authors are referred to, but the content of their work, which the arguments are based on, are not presented Also argumentation for choosing the four specific examples for the comparative study is lacking.

The four examples are nicely presented, but due to the conceptual approach not being properly described, the discussion as well as the conclusions based on the comparative analysis appear vague.
For example it makes it difficult to argue for tendencies, eg. in the discussion in chapter 4, where it is stated that “A new tendency in waterfront solutions is to go beyond the borders of the land and to "hang" public spaces above the water.”   Likewise, the connection to integrated coastal zone management and maritime spatial planning are mentioned, are mentioned but not explained.

Suggestions:

Rewrite chapter 2 on Materials and Methods, so that the conceptual framework / typology forming the basis for the comparative study is well-argued and clear, and explain on which background the four examples are chosen.

This will make it easier also to make the arguments in the discussion clearer, and to make the conclusions more valid.

Author Response

Thank you for the review. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a comparitive study of the design solutions of four cases. The porosity of waterfronts is defined to be a feature of the edge between water-land consisting on being soft and permeable. Based on the design cases presented, the trend of adopting multi-level solutions rather than a vertical quay in order to increase the porosity.  This case study provides insights in the design of waterfront structures. The manuscript is coherent. 

 

1. The qualityof figures for plan and section (3-6) need to be improved. Some characters are too vague to be identified. 

 

2. "Porosity" needs to be empasized in the discussion section since it is a good conceptual idea for structure design. Maybe an extra paragraph is needed.

Author Response

Thank you for the review. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx