Nature improves the quality of our life. We are needed to get to nature in urban life and it is one of the most important factors that make us healthier. After the world has been industrialised and the cities has been developed rapidly, the natural environment has been always argued as a significant issue. It creates the image of the urban environment, its atmosphere, and in further, its identity as well. For that reason, the sense of nature acts as the main keyword of how to form the living area and public space in better condition.

Due to the rapid industrialisation, the natural elements have been developed for the modernised city. In this process, we lost the atmosphere and the beauty of nature in some point. To this extent, there still has been a boundary between the urban context and the natural surroundings in spite of the achievements from the artificial landscape.

In this circumstances, ‘Water’ has been emerged as a new paradigm for living environment recently. It is not because only water is an existing mediator that can connect the nature and urban fabric, but also it brings various of issues related to the needs of new land due to the urban growth and artificial extension like Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, and redevelopments such as river renaissance and harbour area projects. Especially for the redevelopment projects of harbour area, the function has been changed to residential area or public space because of the moving to the new port or the changes of the boundaries. Accordingly, it leads to the consideration of how to organise the public space related to the waterfront. This is an important issue that can affect directly to their identity in port-related cities like Marseille, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Helsinki and so on.

This thesis focuses on creating public space in old port area and suggests the design strate-gies that can connect public and nature in daily life by emphasising the natural atmosphere with artificial environments and keeping functional image of the port at the same time. The research is based on the historical studies of the city and its natural atmospheric identity. The project targets on South harbor area in Helsinki, which has potential to be developed in further future. Based on the studies and analysis, the Maritime museum situates on the South harbor area, creating cultural cluster along the waterfront. In conclusion, this project aims to encourage both beautiful and productive way of redeveloping waterfront space.