The Danish Town of Randers is blessed with a natural river landscape, that borders directly to the city centre. There is only one problem with the “Storkeengen”, which means “stork meadow”: Due to its natural use as a flood area, the whole space is difficult to use for the residents. The renowned architects of C.F. Møller have been working on a smart concept to make the meadow accessible, but also to keep its natural function.

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Excellent Position

Randers is situated on both sides along the Gudenå, the longest river in Denmark. The Storkeengen lies directly between both settlement bodies and separates them from each other. Across the river you can find the city centre, while the adjacent areas in the south are characterised by extensive residential areas. In short: The meadow would be the perfect place for a city park, if it won’t be used as a flood area. Both settlement bodies could be connected with recreational usage.

Delicate Balancing Act

C.F. Møller Architects from Aarhus have tackled the challenging task of turning the area into a city park without loosing its natural function. Their concept includes elevated paths and constructions for several activities. So, they can be used even in times when the meadow is flooded by the river. The pathways and activity plateaux enable the visitors to experience the meadow’s unique flora and fauna at close hand. With the help of new cloudburst channelling routes in adjacent areas, water is collected from roofs, car parks and roads, and led on to Storkeengen. Here, the water is collected in purification basins, designed as natural wet meadow areas, before being led out to the Gudenå. Additional dykes and the improved flow of water during cloudbursts strengthen the efficiency as a flood area even further.

Climate changes will inevitably transform the urban landscape. Acting with visionary foresight, the municipality of Copenhagen has decided upon a comprehensive Cloudburst Management Plan for the entire city, including 300 cloudburst adaptation projects in the next 10 to 20 years. Enghaveparken is among the first of these. With so many projects planned within a short time span, how do we avoid the risk of ending up with relatively generic projects, possibly characterised by a strong focus on the new technical solutions? Enghaveparken might provide an answer.

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Enghaveparken is a well-preserved neoclassical park in Copenhagen that the design team has to adapt to climate change while preserving the cultural value of the park’s neoclassical structure. In the contemporary ‘Anthropocene age’ the human impact on the world is so severe that there is no place not influenced by human activities. This emphasises the long-known mantra we landscape architects live by, i.e. that no work is done on a tabula rasa.

Everything we do must relate to the site and what was there before, and this empowers the debate about heritage. Considering heritage, and how it has shaped the proposal for Enghaveparken in Copenhagen, can be a way of strengthening cultural and aesthetic diversity in a discourse where cloudburst adaptation is at the centre of attention. If you want to understand the proposal, the devil is, as the saying goes, in the detail. We do not see large changes or a reworking of what the park is, but rather think ‘the park looks like itself’.

Throughout the proposal, two approaches to heritage are emphasised equally. First, the park’s neoclassical design from the late 1920s, with its alleys and hedges symmetrically dividing the park into six clearly defined rooms, is retained and becomes a framework for the new park. This follows what heritage scholar Graham Fairclough calls ‘Old Heritage’, which is defined as those objects or parts that need public protection on a national scale, as envisioned by experts.

However, another approach to heritage is also visible in the design: Local people have appropriated the many intimate garden rooms in this neoclassical park and introduced all kinds of social practices and events. Retaining the possibility of continuing these practices and strengthening the possibility for appropriation fits in with what Fairclough calls ‘New Heritage’. The design team seems to especially care about this ‘new’ understanding of heritage, or what historian Dolores Hayden describes as “local memories”. These activities and memories are understood and used as inspiration for the design. In this way, the two different understandings of heritage, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’, support one another.  By using both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ heritage approaches, the project is amplified.

As a result, no grand intentions are projected onto the site, but instead small innovative developments of existing structures and practices. This underlines the proposal’s commitment to preservation and the idea that a small intervention can have a great effect.

The designers seem to have gained from looking back at the different uses, seeing the different layers and understandings of heritage as a resource and framework for their creativity, which thus become a generator of the design. No two places are the same, and neither is their heritage. Thus, heritage becomes a resource and a tool in unveiling the complexity or particularity of a place, whether it is the existing spatial qualities or a certain  characteristic use of the place. Together ‘new’ and ‘old’ heritage can be a way to avoid the cloudburst transformations from looking the same.

Enghaveparken
Client: City of Copenhagen
Design team: TredjeNatur, COWI and Platant
Competition: 2014
Area: 35,000 m2
Cloudburst capacity: 24,000 m3

Credits:
TredjeNatur, COWI and Platant for the Municipality of Copenhagen. Used with permission.

Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar revealed the winner of the international design competition to reimagine the five-acre park at the heart of Downtown Los Angeles: Agence Ter and Team. The proposal drew the highest scores from the 1,355 members of the public who weighed in on the four finalists and was the unanimous first choice of the Pershing Square Renew jury.

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“With 80 design firms from around the globe responding to our call to re-imagine Pershing Square, including our four exceptional finalists, Agence Ter and Team won the hearts and minds of the public and our jury with their brilliant yet accessible and thoughtful design,” said Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar, who has championed the effort to revitalize the historic park. “From the very launch of Pershing Square Renew, our goal was to create an open, warm and inviting design that was focused on serving people and not form – one that would allow Pershing Square, the City’s oldest park, to reclaim its place as the heart of Downtown Los Angeles. Today, we are one important step closer to making that happen.”

One of the most notable features of the winning proposal was what Agence Ter’s founder and director described as “radical flatness.” While the current-day park sits elevated atop a parking garage, with stairs and ramps linking it to the street around parking garage entrances, the new design lowers the top level of the garage to street level, creating views and paths from Fifth Street to Sixth Street and from Olive to Hill. A reflecting pool on the west side of the park mirrors the stately Biltmore Hotel, and an iconic “smart canopy” designed by artist Leo Villareal lights up at night and provides shade during this day. Other features include water cycling and alternative energy systems; a welcoming balance between light and shade; programmable, flexible space; and landscaping that creates a welcoming ecology with gardens, grasses and lawns.

Agence Ter and Team further explain their design in this video:

“It’s been an exciting process for the Department leading to this pivotal moment in the revitalization of Pershing Square,” said Michael A. Shull, General Manager, Department of Recreation and Parks. “The winning design is nothing short of remarkable and we’d like to congratulate the Agence Ter team for winning the public vote with a design proposal that will reimagine our City’s historic five-acre urban park located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

We are extremely excited and ready to contribute to the rebirth of Downtown Los Angeles through the renewing of Pershing Square,” said Henri Bava, founder and director of Agence Ter. “By radically flattening the lifted surface, it will reach out to the neighborhood again, establishing a real dialogue with the city. It will become a green, sustainable and active destination for the metropolis and will be timeless and elegant through its welcoming simplicity.

The top designers in the world brought four extraordinary visions to Los Angeles, and one stood out above all,” said Eduardo Santana, Executive Director of Pershing Square Renew. “Agence Ter and their team captivated the jury and the public with its elegant simplicity, with its connection to the surrounding streets and the city beyond them, and with the canvas it provides for programming, activity, and for the community’s own dreams and desires.”

Los Angeles oldest park

Located in the heart of Downtown L.A., Pershing Square is the City of Los Angeles’ oldest park, dedicated in 1866 by Mayor Cristobal Aguilar as “La Plaza Abaja” (“the Lower Plaza”). Pershing Square has been redesigned and renamed multiple times since its inception, including design overhauls in the 1950s and early 1990s. The square covers an entire city block adjacent to LA’s Historic Core, Jewelry District, Bunker Hill and Civic Center, as well as a major transit station.

In September 2015, the Los Angeles City Council adopted Huizar’s legislation to create a public-private partnership and work with Pershing Square Renew, a non-profit partner, which came out of a task force created by Huizar in 2013. Once the international design competition was announced, Pershing Square Renew received 80 letters of interests from design firms throughout the world and more than 50 submittals of qualifications. From that pool, 10 semifinalists were selected in October, four finalists in December, and one winner today.

Other Los Angeles leaders whose work has been critical to the effort include global design firm Gensler, which has been deeply engaged in the creation, facilitation, and branding in support of the non-profit and international design competition; and Loeb and Loeb, whose principal Allan Abshez provided critical pro bono legal support to the effort as it established itself as an independent public-private partnership and set ambitious goals for the transformation of the city block.

The other three finalists present their designs in the following videos.

James Corner Field Operations:

wHY+Civitas:

SWA | Morphosis:

Located between Nørreport Station, Ørstedsparken and the new market halls, the redesigned Israels Plads brings vibrancy to the heart of Copenhagen. Today, the multifunctional space bustles with people of all ages.

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Israel Plads, located in the heart of Copenhagen, has been redesigned after years of funding issues, planning deliberation and community consultation. It lies next to Torvehallerne, a covered food market that replaced the traditional Grønttorvet vegetable market. The new square is a lively, informal space marking the transition to the Ørstedsparken. Ten years ago, the square was a desolate, wind-swept place, used variously as a parking lot, an area where locals walked their dogs, and an informal gathering space where students played basketball in makeshift ball cages. The space looked abandoned, messy, almost derelict. Today, it has become a place that bustles with activity and attracts many people every day.

Until 1958 the square, then called Grønttorvet, was the location of the city’s major wholesale market. This is where retailers as well as individual clients came to buy fresh food; the market was known for its charming as well as chaotic atmosphere. Soon however, the traffic and logistics that came with the market were no longer manageable in the restricted space of this inner-city neighbourhood and the wholesale market had to find a new location.

At the end of the 1950s Grønttorvet became an empty spot in the middle of the city, without any real function, and the potential of an undiscovered urban space emerged. Grønttorvet, renamed Israels Plads ten years after, experienced the same lot as other large inner-city markets, such as the famous Halles in Paris, for instance, which were forced to move to a southern suburb in 1971. The big empty spot left after this transformation created unique possibilities for establishing a major new urban square in the centre of the city.

For many years, Grønttorvet looked unattractive despite of its unique central location. Things finally began to change in 2011, when, after 15 years of political and financial quarrels, the project of the two market halls on the northern side of the square became reality. The idea of a covered food market was fortunate in its timing, for it was realized at a moment when people’s interest for new culinary experiences was growing. Torvehallerne has injected new vibrancy in a once deserted area and has worked as a catalyst, attracting people from all over the city.

The organizers of the architectural competition named the team of Sweco, COBE, Niras and Morten Stræde winners for the redesign of Israels Plads in 2007. The winning team presented a simple architectural concept for the square: a “flying carpet” that has landed on the ground, defined as a light granite surface, lifted up 25 centimetres from the ground. Different organic shapes are punched out of the granite surface, providing various sports facilities, such as a ball cage, a skating area, a playground for young children and sitting stairs.

The granite plate is recessed from the surrounding facades, leaving sufficient space for car traffic, and descends to meet the street level. Along the facades, a band of traditional Copenhagen pavement with granite slabs and Nordic cobblestones runs around the square, connecting the granite plate to its surroundings. The pavement, in contrast to the light granite of the square, is a reference to traditional Danish building materials and matches the colourful historical facades from the 18th century. […]

Read on in Topos 91 – Squares and Promenades.

Israels Plads
Client: City of Copenhagen
Design team: Sweco, COBE, Niras and Morten Stræde
Completion: 2014
Area: 12.500 square metres