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
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
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.
Before I leave the topic of Finland to jump into Sweden, the city of Turku has a noteworthy development. It's not new, quite the opposite. It's the few remaining wooden houses that survived the Turku fire of 1827. The Luostarinmäki open air museum is a village with buildings dating back to the 18th century. They are beautifully maintained and represent excellent examples of traditional Finnish wood working techniques.
The interiors of the structures are furnished with furniture and tools of the era. Traditional craft workers dressed in period clothing demonstrate the wood working, weaving and shoe making techniques from the structures that were originally built for this purpose. This building made housewares - Turku's early version of 'Crate and Barrel'.
Most of the buildings are open to visitors but they discouraged pictures in the shop areas. From room to room and building to building the structures have various construction techniques. Some where stacked log structure is exposed and visible, but most with a vertical clap board siding.
The living spaces had a smooth wall surface, sometimes papered. In the case of this bedroom builders used newspaper. There was scant information at the museum about the techniques used, so I have to infer that this was either for ease of cleaning or to better reflect light. Spaces are small and ceilings are low, but there is an attention to daylight with large window openings and shallow room widths.
Very few of the houses are painted. This one must have been a more wealthy resident. The other buildings are clad in wood that is coated with tar as a preservative.
Water was a precious commodity in a house with no internal plumbing. Techniques we call 'sustainable' today were standard practice on these buildings. The grass roof would have helped insulate the buildings in winter and summer and the rain barrel water would have been used for cooking and cleaning.
The only 2-story structure in the village was a boarding house for weary travelers.
