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Welcome
Paradise Island is all about enjoying Fyrisån in a new and more intimate way. By getting out there on the water, getting your feet wet and skin tanned, the floating island offers opportunities to see the river from a new and fresh angle. Fyrisån is one of Uppsala’s greatest assets. By venturing out on to this, constantly moving, public waterspace, we hope to inspire people to use the river in new, fun and creative ways. To achieve the goal of getting people in Uppsala out on the water we let ourselves to be inspired by the idea of “staycation” – a cheaper version of a vacation abroad. The name “Paradise Island” refers to the picture of paradise fed to us by travelling agencies, post card makers, travelling magazines etc. Our Paradise Island is an attempt to make a cut out piece of a Caribbean Island placed in Fyrisån. As in the magazines, our version of paradise has a very artificial touch. By making it artificial, intriguing and enjoyable at the same time we aim at bringing people out into the public water space in a way that is pleasant as well as it raises questions about what the word “paradise” really means. The Paradise Island and this booklet are products of the course Project 1:1, administrated by the teachers Ylva Dahlman (Architect and teacher at institutionen för stad och land, SLU, Uppsala) and Susan Paget (Landscape Architect and teacher at institutionen för stad och land, SLU, Uppsala).
Creators Barbara Holzinger, Exchange student from Vienna, BOKU Landscape Architecture Programme, year 5.
Doris Seebacher, Exchange student from Vienna, BOKU Landscape Architecture Programme, year 5.
Elin Julin, Landskapsarkitektstuderande, year 5, SLU, Uppsala
Magnus Nilsson, Landskapsarkitektstuderande, year 4, SLU, Uppsala
? y h w t u B We like the river. There are good things going on along the banks of it at the moment and we would love to contribute with new ideas of how to enjoy it!
Because we know that things can be both fake and fantastic at the same time
We think people will love being on the water instead of just sitting beside it.
We love staycation! When you’re short of cash, a paradise island in your home town offers alternatives to go abroad.
n o i t a r i p Ins For more inspiration of what you can do with public waterspace, check this out!
Parque de Cabecera Valencia, Spain Parque de Buen Retiro Madrid, Spain Paris Plage Paris, France The waters of Versailles France Havnebad Copenhagen, Denmark Islands Brygge Copenhagen, Denmark
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e s i d a r a P Island tree
parasol
treasure chest wooden benches
sand
flowering plants grass
beach chairs
life boat small tree sand castle The “island� is built on an existing raft/ platform that the generous and kind Willy has lent us. The construction is very stable and has been tested for similar kinds of events before. Thank you very much Willy!
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t c u d o r P Final
f l e s r u o y t Do i
The blueprints show how to build a smaller, less expensive, and easy-to-construct platform that one can decorate anyway one likes. Since this project is presented in Uppsala, Sweden, the construction manual is in Swedish. If you would like to have it in German or in English, don’t hesitate to contact us.
n o i t a u l a Ev Our first idea was to construct the whole thing ourselves. A combination of having trouble finding sponsors willing to pay for construction materials and meeting a generous man with an already existing raft made the project take a new turn. The new, much bigger raft gave us new opportunities as well as new problems to solve. As the “island” grew more than six times in size overnight we became dependant on other means of transport in assembling all our parts needed for the project. Organizing transports, permissions, sponsors, material, etc became a larger part of project time than we first expected. Early in the project we realised that planning all our time was essential for the carrying out the Paradise Island Project. Our time plan has been very tight throughout the entire project. Tight but realistic. Because of the constitution of our island, with all its green parts, we couldn’t complete it until the day before the presentation. This gave us no time for unexpected trouble at the end of the project, which was a bit stressful. We were lucky with not getting into trouble until the day before presentation: we decided early to pick up and put the living materials on the day before presentation because we wanted everything to look “fresh” and perfect
at the day of presentation. Because of a misunderstanding we got no grass and quickliy had to find a solution to the problem. Our emergency-plan-B was to gather the grass (~ 15 m2) ourselves. It turned out to work very well eventhough it was a loss of time we really had not calculated for. Of course we were disappointed with the sudden change of plans, but we learnt the hard way there will always be a risk when relying too much on others. When working on a project for a longer period of time, we found out that it is very important to remember the initially stated aim. As soon as you forget to ask yourself “why”, you are in danger of compromising the main idea. Thanks to mid-course seminars and feedback from friends and teachers we think that we succeeded in keeping it real and carrying out what we set out to do.
Barbara Holzinger Doris Seebacher Elin Julin Magnus Nilsson
. . . o t s k n a Th Willy Palm for letting us borrow his big, stable raft, giving us construction related advice, lending us tools and materials that we lacked and letting us store our things in a warm and dry place. Without Willy we could not have carried out this project.
Svia Handelstr채dg책rd for kindly donating beautiful, flowering plants. Visit their hompage at: www.sviahandelstradgard.se
Uppsala Kommun for helping us with all the permissions needed. Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU for helping out with transportation and scrap material (Per-Arne Klasson and Linus Hedin). Special thanks to our Teachers Ylva Dahlman and Susan Paget for supporting and challenging us in completing this project.
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Nice raft picture as a fabulous finish =)