The Western Harbor development has earned a reputation as a tourist destination. Its monument, the Turning Torso, can be seen for miles around and draws visitors like bugs to a lamp on a summer night. This is for good reason. The tower is a structure of sculptural beauty and Western Harbor set the standard for mixed use development in the 21st century. Rarely, however, do you hear of future plans in Malmö. The city is growing rapidly and the bar for environmental standards is set high. The City has targeted 2020 for all public buildings to operate on 100% renewable energy sources. By 2030, the entire city will run on hydro, solar, bio-gas and wind power. This goal outpaces Stockholm's targets by two decades.
It appears that the City Administration has successfully changed course from a city focused on shipping and industry to one supported by tourism, education and technological expertise. But there is still work ahead of them. The Western Harbor area suffers from limited transportation connections to the city center and a city core that is active day and night throughout the year. Projects in Hyllie, Augustenborg and further development in the Western Harbor aim to strengthen these connections, to build on the momentum from Western Harbor's success (both financially and environmentally) and to preserve the city's status as a leader in sustainable development.
Siemens press picture of the Øresund bridge and wind farm
Following the opening of the Øresund Bridge in 2000 the city experienced significant growth. Then, the population of Malmö was 250,000 people. Today it is 300,000 (20% growth in 10 years). By 2050 population is projected to climb to 400,000. The tunnel connecting the bridge to Central Station opened at the end of 2010. There is now a connection between Copenhagen airport and Malmö Central Station that takes 18 minutes to traverse. These improvements will ensure a steady influx of tourist, business and commercial traffic - not to mention significant population migration.
This video authored by the Copenhagen firm BIG is focused on development potential around Copenhagen but it spells out a plan for the entire Øresund region that the bridge connection made possible. Jump to 5:45 to see how this region is envisioned as a centerless city by stringing together the region with power, water, waste and transportation infrastructure.
Copenhagen aims to infill their urban environment with new development, but with the bridge in place, Malmö is physically closer to its center than its nearest suburbs and there is room to grow. The first stop on the train once visitors cross the bridge is the Hyllie station. It is here that the City of Malmö has plans to build a major new development.
City of Malmo promotional video
HYLLIE
A new transit oriented development of 8,000 residential units and 8,000 offices is planned for this greenfield site south of Malmö at the Hyllie station. A convention center and arena opened in 2008 kicking off the development activities. The Emporia shopping center designed by Wingårdhs Architects is under construction and completion is anticipated some time next year.
AUGUSTENBORG
To a large extent, and from a new construction sustainability perspective, the design and construction industry in Sweden is self-sufficient. It requires less incentive and stimulus from the city than it has in years prior. Recently, international attention has turned to the challenge of energy upgrades to existing buildings. Here again, Malmö has taken a proactive response to this challenge.
Green roof, PVs and rain gardens at Augustenborg municipal building
In the early '50's, Augustenborg was a contemporary development that attracted local professionals and their families. Larger apartments in the city center or stand alone homes in the suburbs drew the tenants from the development in the '60's. By the early '90's the area was known more for its high rates of crime, vandalism and drug use. In 1998, the City designated Augustenborg as 'Ekostaden' or 'Eco-City' and used the existing 1,800 unit, post war development as a test bed for sustainability upgrades.
stormwater overflow area
The idea started as a discussion between individuals at three organizations, the Department for Internal Services, MKB (Malmö's public housing company) and the Augustenborg school. They managed to stimulate interest in the idea of Augustenborg as a sustainable development. The open channel storm drainage system and the green roof experimentation on municipal buildings were designed to address recurrent flooding problems on the site. But the entire development was planned to be socially, economically and environmentally successful. Community members were invited to join workshops and provide ideas to improve their community. The resulting development serves the needs of its residents, addresses the demands of the changing weather conditions and is fully occupied. For this, the development earned a UN world Habitat Award in 2010. The facade upgrades are on hold pending further funding. The design, community involvement process and the upgraded buildings themselves serve as examples for planners, designers and builders faced with questions surrounding the sustainability upgrades to existing buildings.
WESTERN HARBOR - NEXT STEPS
The trip to the Western Harbor requires a bus ride or a 20 minute walk from Central Station. The public transportation, or lack thereof, does stand in the way of the potential for this area. But the 3,000 residents in the Bo01 development alone are not enough to justify the expenditures for a tram, subway extension or more frequent buses. The University and new businesses are cropping up in all corners. And more residential mixed-use development is either in planning or under construction.
City of Malmö - Western Harbor Master Plan
The Masthusen area places an additional 1,000 units of housing, offices, educational buildings and retail on the site southeast of the turning torso tower and just south of the planned central park. The mixed use aspect of the proposed master plan will help to infuse the area with off season daytime activities and some much needed night life. The Fullriggaren block, primarily offices and residential buildings is currently under construction. It, together with the Kappseglaren area will add another 1,000 units.
And this is just a sampling of the activity on this peninsula of land. There are too many to mention all of them here but they are available on the city Western Harbor site. Based on the master plan below, which shows unit counts by block, at full build-out the Western Harbor will have more than 10,000 housing units. Combine that housing with the new university and numerous business moving into the area and you have a small city within the city built at a comparable density and following the strict environmental standards established for the Bo01 project.
The smaller and friendly cousin to Stockholm on the west coast of Sweden has industrial roots in shipping, fishing and
textiles. Since the mid-1990s the sound of pile drivers has echoed from across
the water to downtown Gothenburg as new offices and residential buildings cropped
up along the north banks of the Göta Älv river in a development called Norra Älvstranden.
More than 600 acres of industrial property along a five-kilometer stretch
between the Älvsborgsbron Bridge and the Göta Älvbron Bridge on the island of
Hisingen have undergone a major transformation.
New offices and apartment units
are lined up in tidy rows of colorful buildings along the river like the
shipping containers that once sat there. Construction has progressed from
central Sannegårdshamnen south to Eriksburg and north to Lindholmen comprising
some 6,000 new residential units and over 200,000 ft2 of office space. By the
time it is completed in 2025 it will house 13,000 people, provide offices for
40,000 and have 13,000 students. These are impressive figures for any city. When
you consider that the population of Gothenburg is approximately 500,000 people,
they are staggering.
The public boats ferry passengers to and from the Lilla
Bommen port at Central Station three times an hour throughout the day keeping
commute times minimal. Critical mass has triggered another wave of development
brining grocery stores, community centers and more businesses, as if to fulfill
the promise: build it and they will come.
RIVER CITY
The City recognizes they
have a winner on their hands, so have plans to develop sites further east,
further west and on the south side of the river. Norra Älvstranden together
with these new developments will form River City. Gothenburg sought assistance
from outside to help envision a new plan for the city. To do this they used a
unique process. Rather than initiating a worldwide competition and selecting a
single winning scheme, this spring, Gothenburg invited design teams to a
workshop where they would have an opportunity to present and discuss master
plan concepts. From around 100 applications received, they chose 10 teams from
all over the world to present on June 11th.
Then the teams shared
and exchanged ideas in a series of brainstorming sessions and workshops
throughout the week. The presentations and discussions are on YouTube and the material from these presentations is on display in central Gothenburg
next to the Ferris wheel. In the summer of 2012 the city will make a decision
on the River City vision. It remains to be seen what this process will yield.
Now that Gothenburg is armed with ideas from 10 teams, the question is: can the
city planners hit the target?
LINDHOLMEN
Businesses and schools, located primarily in the growing
Lindholmen Science Park, take advantage of a short jump across the bridge to
downtown. The initial wave of businesses slowly filled out the existing
industrial warehouse buildings in the area. These are widely spaced buildings
with vast seas of asphalt between them. The injection of parking planters and
tree lined paths to main entrances are modest improvements.
The east side of
the marina remains an inhospitable space to pedestrians. Crossing
the marina bridge to the west, the Science Park is a cluster of new office
buildings adjacent to the Lindholmen campus of Chalmers IT University.
The hub
of this school and business complex is the “Kuggen (The Cog)” building by WingårdhsArchitects.
The design goal for heating energy use is 60 KwH/m2 per year, a high bar for an
office building rivaling the targeted average heating energy use for the Royal
Seaport development. Bold form and unconventional planning are the byproduct of
a thoughtful energy conscious concept. The colorful terra
cotta panels are symbolic of the energy and vibrancy of ideas this building is
designed to incubate.
The bridge connections to the school and office building
enforce this idea. Inside are flexible work environments to foster innovation
and collaboration between the university and businesses. Triangular windows
maximize views and daylight while minimizing open area and heat loss. Solar
panels on the roof generate a percentage of the buildings power needs. The halo
of steel rails around the top floor of the building is the guide for a kinetic
billboard-sized, multi-colored brise soleil that tracks the sun throughout the
day. This building is a carnival of design ideas - an architect’s fantasy
realized.
Developments in River City are guided by the national
building codes for energy. The Hamnhuset apartment buildings in the Sannegårdshamnenarea have gone well
beyond this requirement by building to the Passivhus standard. At 115 units, it is Sweden's largest passive house. The apartments are heated not by radiators but by household appliances and the occupants’ own body heat. The ground-breaking design uses just a quarter of the energy of conventional housing and generates 70% lower carbon dioxide emissions compared with a standard block of flats. This CNN video will tell you more about passive house design.
PASSIVEHUS CENTRUM
Passivhus Centrum is a Swedish sponsored organization
responsible for educating designers and contractors in the building industry
about the details, technology and methods required to build a passive house.
The center is an educational resource to the industry; a showroom for Swedish
manufactured heat exchangers and refrigerators; a gallery for full size mockup
wall sections, slab insulation details and building materials; and classroom
environments for instruction.
In 2010 the building code advisory of the EU directed that,
effective 2020, new residential buildings shall achieve a “near zero energy”
standard of 15 kwH/m2 per year (avoiding the use of the trademark “Passivhus”
term.) The only known way to achieve this standard is through passive house
techniques like those Hans Eek is teaching at the center.
The techniques are not technically difficult to understand,
nor are they expensive additions to the bottom line construction cost. Reports
on the Lindas and Sannegårdshamnenprojects in
Gothenburg indicate that the additional 4-5% construction costs are offset
within a 5-10 year period by the reduced energy costs. Based on figures for the
retrofit of a 1970’s housing project in Alsingsos, the technique is cost
effective on existing buildings, too.
The biggest challenges in implementing these requirements are
keeping the building materials dry and maintaining the quality of construction
required to achieve the strict air infiltration requirements. By making the
requirements clear from the outset and providing instructional material to
assist designers and builders through the process, Sweden has managed to
overcome these challenges.
I left my meeting with Hans Eek at the Swedish Passivhus
Centrum inspired to extol the virtues of passive house design like an
evangelical preacher. Sealing and insulating the building better can make a
house 10 times more efficient than current standards. No other single product
or system approach comes close to this kind of savings. Implementing passive
house strategies in new housing projects should be a no-brainer.
Walking through the narrow streets of Gamla Stan at night brings to mind movies of cold war espionage woven in with a steamy affair between international spies. Along Götgatan or Folkungatan in Södermalm you are more likely to find eclectic shops and restaurants sporting tattooed and pierced likenesses of Lisbeth Salander. The differences between the two areas highlight the physical disconnection between the two areas. Stockholm hopes to better knit the character of these two areas with their SLUSSEN design competition.Between Old Town (Gamla stan), and Södermalm to the south lies a dreadful concrete noodle bowl of traffic arterial roads, train tracks, a boat locks and a city bus terminal. Somewhere in this rats nest a pedestrian is to navigate a path across the river between these popular destinations. The competition attracted big names in design; the likes of Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, BIG and - Sweden's own - Carl Nyrén and Wingårdhs. Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote a tight editorial for the NY Times about the competition entries. He was surely disappointed to learn that Stockholm recently selected Norman Foster's team as the winning entry.
Here is the link to images of the other entries and worldarchitecture.com's decidedly softer editorial by comparison. The traffic revisions at Slussen together with a revised underground bypass motor way around the city center (currently under construction) will prevent the city center from suffering a traffic embolism in the coming decades. This competition is one of three major projects Stockholm has planned with their Vision 2030 document. This is their counter offensive to an even greater challenge of six digit population growth. Population today is 840,000 people. By 2030 it is projected they will have one million inhabitants.A cornerstone of their solution to housing this new population growth is the Stockholm Royal Seaport. Here the city aims to improve on their sustainable design success in Hamarby Sjöstad and build a zero carbon development by 2030 with homes for 10,000 and offices for 30,000.
STOCKHOLM ROYAL SEAPORT –
Herzog & de Meuron designed the Oscar properties site using the existing masonry gasometer structures and replacing one of the three with a 47 story cylindrical residential tower.
Plans by AIX Architects working with the City of Stockholm suggest the gasometer can be reused and converted to a public theater.
Two projects were designed by Wingårdhs, the SKB and Folkhem residential buildings. Master planning for the development was completed by the City Planning Administration. Plans for a development in this area of the city go back to City Master Plans from 100 years ago. The1999 Master Plan initiated formal planning for the shipping and ferry ports in the northeast part of Stockholm. The detailed planning started in 2000 with Council approval of the plan in 2003 and an updated master plan in 2009. The first phase is under construction and includes 680 residential units and 10
developer/builder/design teams.
Construction phasing of Stockholm Royal Seaport around Hjorthagen
Spearheading the project are the City of Stockholm Planning and Development departments. Together withCity Hall, The Stockholm Seaport
Innovation and (a local university) the Royal Institute of Technology they make up the municipal development team. The city owns the 236 hectares (583 acres) of land and auctioned off the first set of parcels (numbers 1, 2 and 3 above) in 2010.
Developers assembled construction and design teams and bought sites. The city invited successful bidders to a preliminary environmental brainstorming session. Building on a recommended environmental profile from the city, the teams generated ideas that formed an aggressive, but achievable, environmental profile that will be used as a project wide standard through the remainder of the project.
There are currently 400 businesses and 2000 residents living on the site in the Hjorthagen and port areas. So there has been considerable community involvement in the design process via public comment periods over the past year. A key resolution of the Vision 2030 document places an emphasis on improving the business climate and building the “work city” program. Three significant changes to the port address this effort; 1] moving the primary shipping terminal to Nynäshamn (south of the city), 2] upgrading the existing cruise and ferry terminals and 3] phasing out the oil port in the southern pier of the development, Loudden. These changes use the most successful and vibrant port activities that support commercial development. Moving shipping operations creates both an opportunity to upgrade port infrastructure and to make valuable commercial property available for for development. Based partially on the ambitious sustainability goals set for the project, in 2009 the Royal Seaport site was designated as one of 18 projects worldwide to be supported by the Climate Positive Development Program a joint initiative between the Clinton Climate Initiative and the US Green Building Council.
This profile sets an energy consumption target of 55 KwH per m2 per year or about 50% of the current Swedish average rate of consumption. Three environmental targets form the project directive:
By 2020 CO2 emissions less than 1.5 tonnes/person.
Swedish avg is 4.5 tonnes/person.
Adapt to future climate change.
By 2030 Seaport will be fossil fuel free. This compares to a 2050 target for all of Stockholm to be fossil fuel free.
Focus areas to achieve these targets include energy, transportation, lifestyle, eco-cycle and climate adaptation. Current designs include a bio-fuel fired combined power/heating plant, an energy smart grid, vacuum tube waste collection services, bio-fueled public transportation and a cadre of low carbon, low energy building solutions. Couple these with the port, roadway and Tvarbanan (metro light rail) upgrades planned for the area and it is clear that Stockholm is serious about meeting these targets. The site is already easily accessible from the city center and it is surrounded on two sides by nature reserves of several hundred acres. This is an area where people will want to live.
The Royal Seaport information is compiled from data on the project web site and a meeting with Daniel Carlson-Mård, the city of Stockholm Development Administration Project Officer.
