le GRAND LARGE DISTRICT - DUNKIRK FRANCE

Stephane Chalmeau

In the ultimate feat of redundant naming, the City of Dunkirk branded the master plan of their abandoned waterfront to make certain it was clear to everyone the tremendous size of this development. But in this case, it's not size that matters. The name in French refers to the open sea that this master plan turns to address.

The City of Dunkirk, the Port Authority, Projénor (a developer) and the Town Planning Agency entrusted the master planning of their industrial waterfront to Richard Rogers. In 1991, the city council approved the plan and called it the Neptune project. The focus of the planning was to orient the city toward the water and to urbanize the brownfield remnants of Dunkirk's industrial past. The first phase was to renovate the city squares, construct the new University and promote new commercial development. The goal of the second phase was to build "quartier 21" to meet the sustainability goals of Agenda 21. The Grand Large District is the 42 hectare 2nd phase of the master planning effort. It is located northeast of the city center on the site of a shipyard left vacant when the shipping company closed its doors in 1988. Work began in 2005 when the selection committee awarded the project to the French architecture firm Nicolas Michelin (ANMA).

ANMA Master Plan Concept

The location on the waterfront and only a short walk from the city center made it ideal for residential development. This was an underlying point of the Neptune project; to stem the tide of deurbanization sweeping the city due to rising property costs and fewer inner city jobs.

To attain the sustainability goals, the buildings harness the power of the sun, rain and the trash. The attached single family homes have roof mounted photo-voltaic cells. Units are well insulated, use mechanically assisted natural ventilation and are kept warm with district heat recovered from a local waste incineration plant. Rainwater is harvested from the urban park and the gable roofs.

In addition to the environmental aspects, the development is promoted as a cultural, recreational and leisure hub for Dunkirk. It makes this point by drawing attention to several components of the plan; a community center/ gymnasium, an urban park area, access to the public beach and access to the contemporary art museum LAAC (Lieu d'Art et d'Action Contemporaine). The social emphasis on the development is supported by the fact that 40% of the units are set aside for social housing and 10% for first time buyers.

The shimmering metallic gable roofs of the waterfront buildings combined with the warm color of the wood cladding give the development great curb appeal. It was the cover image that first turned my head toward the activity in this port.

Observing the district first hand reinforced this first impression. The depth of forethought with which ANMA approached the planning has paid off. The contemporary park design, inclusion of the cultural and recreation programs, the pedestrian scale of the development and the playful use of form and material on the buildings all lend Grand Large a strong sense of livability.

The distinct lack of privacy screening on either the waterfront gable buildings or the inner attached single family homes, on the other hand, illustrate a priority on planning and design over residents needs. The maturing landscape (where planted) will help address this concern within a couple years. Residents of these first 216 units, of the planned 930, will have to wait for other elements to grow in as well. Things like public transportation and a grocery store. The Department of Geography at l'Ecole normale superieure has acknowledged the tangible disconnect between the city center and the Grand Large district and lack of a center of activity. Their remedy? Activate the old port area (Citadel) by building up a new center around the University buildings. This solution fails to take advantage of existing attributes of the city and is divergent from the original master plan. The addition of commercial and retail space to the development would provide the necessary day and nigh activity to the community. 

The current lack of commercial or retail space lends it an eerie-ghost-town sense after dark. The projects ultimate aim is a total of 1,500 units and 40,000 m2 of retail. This density will be the seed that private investment will fertilize to fill out this growing community. Only then will this community have earned its name.

MALMÖ REGION

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.

Wingardhs

Photo credit

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.

Masthusen Master Plan - Kanozi Architects

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.

Housing plan diagram from City of Malmö

HAMMARBY SJOSTAD

The Hammarby Sjostad area, south of city center, was conceived in the early 90's as an Olympic Village for Stockholm’s bid for the 2004 Olympics. Stockholm staked their bid on a highly sustainable Olympics. They of course lost the bid to Athens. But watching the London 2012 Olympics planning unfold, they were clearly ahead of their time. Despite losing to the Greeks, Stockholm moved forward and invested heavily in the development to make it a test bed of new sustainable building system technologies. Now nearing complete build out, the development is one of the foremost research destinations in the world for developers, city planners and architects. 

Aerial from City of Stockholm

The environmental goals for the project were set in 1997, late in the design process.

• 75% built in public transportation at the start 
• 80% target for commute to work by means other than a car (actual is 79%)
• Be twice as green as other developments. In other words, lower the environmental impact by 50% (actual is 30-40%)
• Provide means for residents to work on site (8% actual is lower than expected).

Map from City of Stockholm (hammarbysjostad.se)

The master plan provided for 11,500 residences and 10,000 offices (28,000 people) on 204 total hectares, 171 of them on land. Construction started in 1997 and is nearly complete. The total cost to date  is 4.5 billion euros. Currently there are 20,000 people living on site. The development is quite popular among young families. So, of the total population, 15% are children under 16 years - a much higher percentage than expected or planned. Original plans called for 1 school and 1 daycare center. There are now 3 schools and 15 daycare facilities throughout the area.

The city leased or sold the land to numerous developer/design teams and built the project in phases. Public transportation was key to the success of the development. The car trips, parking and city access were part of the planning discussion from the outset. Currently there are 0.7 parking spaces per unit and nearly 80% of the residents commute to work by some means other than a personal car.

The technology in Hammarby Sjostad was, in many instances, so new that the systems have not been broadly copied. Only now is the city collecting the data on system performance to make it available for use on other projects. The data will be a valuable tool for Stockholm as they embark on the next major development at the Royal Seaport project. Preliminary reports are available on the project web site. It will also serve to refute or validate numerous energy savings, water savings and urban planning strategies for the building design and construction industry at large. As part of the Royal Seaport project, the city has mandated that the information be collected real time and shared within the city and abroad to further advance the public knowledge of sustainable technologies. 

As an ongoing educational resource, the project planned for an informational showroom for residents and visitors called GlasshusEtt. Its dual-glazed facade, solar cells and fin-tube heaters running on district heat from a bio-gas boiler make it an extremely energy efficient building by any standard. Through surveys, community outreach programs and seminars, the staff here have helped reduce water usage on site and impacted significant change in behavior within the development.

Below is a partial list of the sustainable solutions incorporated on site.

Water

•         Wastewater treatment plant that creates biogas for stove gas and city buses
•        Stormwater collection and on site treatment
•     Bio-deegraded sewer sludge is used as fertilizer and to make bio-gas

Fortum Energy's thermal power plant

Energy

•        PV panels on the roof of select residential buildings to produce power for common areas.
•        Solar tubes for hot water heating on select buildings
•         District heating and cooling from treated waste water
•      Bio-gas made as a bi-product of waste water treatment used as bus fuel
•      Bio-gas used for district heating

Waste

•         Below grade vacuum waste collection service for residential buildings
•      Waste is sorted for recycling into 4 fractions
•      Bio-degradable waste is composted and used as fertilizer or turned into bio-gas
•      Combustible waste is incinerated and used for district heating

Transportation

•         Bus and tram connection to local train station
•         Car share program
•         Minimal parking per unit
•         Bike and pedestrian friendly road system
•         Free ferry shuttle across bay every 15 minutes
•         Public access marina
•         Live/work development concept

Locks and salmon ladder

Ecology

•         Land bridges over freeway connect nature reserve to site
•         Reed bed in bay and along canal edges encourages bird habitat
•         Salmon ladder on locks

view to school and residences from nature reserve

Social and public health

•         Pocket parks, access to public nature reserve and ski area
•         Bridges, paths and bike storage promote walking and biking
•         3 schools and 15 daycare buildings on site

OSLO NORWAY

The roof of the Opera building is bright. It is this almost translucent white marble. The light reflects off the surfaces like winter sun on snow. That light combined with the steep roof slope brings to mind mischievous activities on the Opera’s winter rooftop. I personally think it would be perfect for a silver saucer sled. The guys in this video were thinking along the same lines.

Image courtesy of Oslo Waterfront Development Department

The master plan, for which the Opera building marked the first step, will change the Bjørvika industrial waterfront to a thriving commercial, residential and cultural area. The Opera quarter is one of five development areas that the City of Oslo has included in their Fjord City master plan. New work in Bjørvika, Aker brygge, Vippetangnen, Filipstad and Sydhavna will transform several kilometers  of coastline and hundreds of acres of waterfront on three separate bays to a thriving mixed use waterfront area tied together by a continuous pedestrian promenade and electric tram.

Opera Quarter (Bjørvika)

The Opera building’s design by Snøhetta has made this waterfront area extremely popular for visitors. It was constructed on a manmade island of beams on piles. The design introduces the broader public to the outdoor space, then lets their curiosity draw them inside to the performances. On any given day you will find the plaza area and the various levels of the roof busy with tourists. They come to experience the unique trek to the building rooftop that affords spectacular views of the Oslo fjord. It is just a few steps from the roof to the lobby where you can buy a ticket and see a performance.

The Opera has in itself proven to be an adequate magnet to the waterfront despite some significant obstacles between the city and the waterfront, namely the E18 motor way. Already the city has constructed a 675 meter long tunnel beneath the bay to divert the majority of traffic around the train station and the Opera quarter. The construction work is underway to demolish the elevated roadway and convert the four lane highway to a tree lined, boulevard with tram rails, bike paths and crosswalks. 

Many of the office buildings in the Bar Code development are already occupied. Residential buildings are under construction and more are on the way. By the time this quarter is completed, it will house 3,000 residents and provide offices for 10,000.

Bar code area in lower left

The "Bar Code" is an area developed around a concept that enables access to and from either end of the narrow building footprints. The resulting plan resembles its namesake. It encourages and enables day lighting and natural ventilation of office environments and, more importantly, the density and location of these buildings near the central station means that a majority of the people living and working in these buildings will take public transportation.

Oslo’s confidence is bursting and the drawing boards are full with new competition winning design schemes. Herreros Arquitectos won the The New Munch Museum competition with their scheme “Lambda”. 

Lund Hagem Arkitekter and Atelier Oslo took home the prize for their Daichmann Library design submittal “Diagonale” . Construction of these new projects, a new park at the mouth of the Alna river and hundreds of new residential units will complete the build out of that the Opera started. When 2030 rolls around the Opera Quarter will include 1 million square meters (10 million ft2) of new construction on 70 hectares (173 acres) of land! Bjørvika is a veritable playground of urban planning.

Aker brygge

For each exuberant and playful building in the Opera Quarter there is a corresponding bar, restaurant, condo building or museum on the eastern waterfront of the Pipervika - the Aker brygge area. At the head of the bay is the Radhus plassen town hall and plaza designed by Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson and built between 1931 and 1951. Having just come from Stockholm I saw a connection between the design of their city hall and Oslo’s. 

In a display of wealth and power the interior flooring is patterned marble and the walls are beautiful, colorful frescoes layered with socialist optimism and historical references. 

Construction will start next year on the Town Hall’s new neighbor, the National Museum.  The firm Kleihues + Schuwerk Gesellschaft von Architekten won a lengthy competition with their entry “forum artis”. From this image you can see that it rivals the massing and scale of the Town Hall while making the Nobel Museum look like a miniature from a Holiday train set.

The port history for this bay dates back 1,000 years. To make way for new shops and condos, all the shipping activities were moved from this area in the '80's and '90's. In the course of the last two decades the waterfront warehouse and industrial buildings have gradually turned over to offices, shopping malls and restaurants. 

New residential buildings cropped up and the docks were converted to ferry terminals and a pleasure craft marina. The construction on Pipervika continues waterward with Tjuvholmen, a new manmade island replete with 140,000 m2 (1.4 million ft2) of high end condos, below grade parking, a 2 acre park and a new museum designed by Renzo Piano. 

This point of the pier will mark the completion of the Aker brygge development in 2014. There are so many people walking through this area on a sunny day that it feels more like a Southern California boardwalk than a city well above 55 degrees latitude.  

Vippetangen, Sydhavna and Filipstad

Centered and perched above the two bays Pipervika and Bjørvika, the medieval fortress Akershus stands watch over the city waterfront. The point of this peninsula will be developed as Vippetangnen, the ferry and cruise ship terminal. And the building won’t stop there. To address the some 200,000 new inhabitants in Oslo by 2025, there is another mixed use development on the way. West of Aker Brygge lies Filipstad, where acres of existing port/industrial area are ripe with development potential. Here the city master plan suggests moving the shipping and storage functions to a new modern facility south of downtown in Sydhavna to make room for more residential and commercial development. When completed, Sydhavna will be the largest and most modern shipping port in Norway. With the exception of cruise ships and ferry terminals, Sydhavna will be the only shipping port in Oslo. If this sounds familiar, then I thank you, because you’ve been reading my posts about Stockholm and Helsinki. For images of the waterfront and Oslo information go to this site.

Sustainabiity

In their Guide to a Green Capital, Oslo has pledged to reduce climate gas emissions (CO2, N2O nitrus oxide, CH4 methane) to 50% of 1990 levels by the year 2030. The chart below shows that they their emissions have actually gone up by 15% in the past 25 years. As a course correction they have set their sights on making the Fjord City project net zero energy and are targeting these specific areas to combat their emissions:

• Production of electricity from hydropower plants and development of district heating based on waste
• Economic aid to finance projects that increase energy efficiency
• The development of electric, rail based public transport
• A toll road system to finance the improvement of main arteries, to reduce traffic on local streets and to develop the public transport system
• Tax on the use of studded tires
• The prevention of urban sprawl by concentration of city development within the current city borders, close to nodes in the public transport network and identified local centres
• Programmes for reuse of waste, construction material and extraction of energy from waste

DRAGON TATOOS, NOODLE BOWLS AND THE GASOMETER

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 with City 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.