Enghaveparken: Designing for Climate Change
Enghaveparken, a public park in Denmark’s capital city is set to undergo a redesign that will make it part of Copenhagen’s cloudburst solution.
In 2011, Copenhagen was struck by an unprecedented, severe cloudburst, which caused 7 billion Danish Kroners worth of damages in just one day. Following the event the municipality of Copenhagen developed a climate change plan for the city to protect it against similar future events and create a green city with improved recreational facilities, urban quality and bio diversity.
Copenhagen’s climate adaptation plans identify the challenges that the city is likely to face on the short and long term as a result of climate change and puts forward solutions to counter the negative effects of these challenges.
A significant part of the climate change plan, is a cloud burst solution developed in 2012, which details how the city can be secured against destructive cloudbursts and flooding in the future. Since the sewerage systems of the city has proved insufficient for extreme rain events, the municipality has put a plan for how the different districts in the city can be redesigned to channel water away from the sewerage systems and into the port, lakes and green areas of the city.
Enghaveparken is now about to become part of this solution. With 85 years in its history, the park has become in need of a loving hand and has been appointed as a central element in the climate adaptations of Copenhagen. Presented by a consulting group consisting of COWI, TREDJE NATUR and Platant the new design accommodates for climate change through multi-functional, sustainable design.
Through the new design, Enghaveparken will not only be able to accommodate 24,000 cubic meters of water, but will also present a range of new experiences, wider biodiversity and recreational opportunities bringing value to the parks more than one million visitors per year.
In order to contain such large quantities of water, a dike will be built along the edge of the park. The dike will in its daily use function as a bench and under severe cloudbursts it will hold back large amounts of water. Apart from the dike the new design includes a range of excavations that can room the water such as an amphitheatre, which under normal circumstance can gather a large number of spectators.
Further, an underground reservoir will collect daily rain and circulate the water around the park via the central water garden and along the dike. The water will be treated biologically through an active planting bed.
We asked Flemming Rafn Thomsen, architect and founding partner of TREDJE NATUR about the importance of including climate change into architectural design. Thomsen referred back to an unprecedented rain event in Copenhagen in 2011 where a severe cloudburst hit the city and caused 7 billion Danish Kroner worth of damages.
“There are two levels in your question. First of all, it is about ensuring the city’s values. 7 billion [Danish Kroner] for a rain event in 2011 is of course a completely unacceptable loss. It must be resolved, and here the city has had to accept that the sewerage system cannot accommodate these new water events. Another, more ethical level addresses the fundamental issue that we cannot ignore the fact that the city is changing without creating an occasion for reflection about these changes. We work to create visibility around the city circuit, so we can see where the water goes, collect it and use it locally, and in a phenomenological sense this adds a highly sensuous nature dimension to the city that invites a greater understanding of the contexts we are part of.” Thomsen said.
These ideas of sustainable, climate-adapted design will most likely be seen in several places in the future.
“We work with a special customized solution we refer to as the Copenhagen Climate Street, and this could be rolled out as a standard typology for [Copenhagen’s] streets, which will be converted to direct water over the next 20 years in the Copenhagen climate adaptation. It has always been our ambition to showcase solutions that could serve as an inspiration to the rest of the city and, in fact, the rest of the world’s cities that has similar challenges. It will effectively be a much greener, healthier and socially mobilizing city, […] where the city is not longer in opposition to nature.” Thomsen said.
With the basic design approved and the finances granted, the project is now seeing an inclusion of the park users as a second step in its development. While the overall structure of alleys, park space and accommodation of rainwater is fixed, the daily users will help get the finer details in place to achieve a solution that meets local needs.
“When a cherished park such as Enghaveparken needs to change, it is important that we include users for advice. Consultants and politicians may have many good ideas, but if none of the park’s guests want to use the new facilities, we of course should not be making them. Therefore, it is imperative that we invite users to participate in the development long before the spade hits the ground”, says Morten Kabell, technical and environmental mayor, Copenhagen.
The first dialogue with users of the park took place in June 2015 while the second is set to take place in August and September 2015 The second phase will consists of four workshops focused around specific areas in the park.
The expected date of commencement for Enghaveparken’s redesign is 2017 and the renewed park is expected to be ready for inauguration in 2018.
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