Urban Project: City Dune, the private square

by Álvaro Castro Sebastián from Plataforma Urbana.

Description submitted by the project team. Within a city, squares are fundamental elements in the public space due to their recreational, articulating qualities and for presenting, in general, some vegetation. Most of them are created as the resulting space between streets, so they emerge from a public initiative. However, in today’s metropolises, it is common to find more and more squares of private property. These may correspond to gardens of buildings open to the public, waste spaces or common areas of a tower complex, to name just a few examples.

The main challenge of this theme is that private initiative, which executes these squares with its capital, provides citizens with a livable space, safe and guaranteed access. These variables, eminently architectural, are not always contemplated in these squares, because they go beyond the interests of those who are developing the project, therefore, depend on their own will to create a space of quality. Briefly, the private financier becomes increasingly important in the creation of public spaces. This is the case of “The City Dune” in Copenhagen, a private square of public use with special attention in developing an architecture from the private, but that addresses the citizenship.

The context of the project is an area adjacent to Havnebade – a bay port – characterized by the scarcity of public spaces, poor infrastructure, poor offices and introverted shopping centers. However, its centrality in the city is very attractive for corporate offices, so the Swedish bank SEB Bank has decided to install its Danish headquarters in an area bordered by two high traffic streets, and the Lundgaard and Tranberg office has built two towers with a underground parking space between them.

The SLA office was assigned a public space project on the upper slab of the parking lots with the idea of ​​linking the towers with each other and with the bay area. This public space, the second design memorial, was designed as a sloping surface simulating a “sand dune of northern Denmark, or a snowy Scandinavian winter mound”.

This 7,300 m² inclined plane rises 7 meters above the street through undulating tiered layers. However, despite the slope, some of the layers overlap through gently inclined ramps, forming different continuous paths that link one building to the other and both with the street. This guarantees universal access for people with reduced mobility and cyclists. The cracks between the curves of these stepped layers make up the space for vegetation.

In this sense, the project uses the landscape as a starting point: it seeks to reinterpret nature in an urban context, without importing it literally.

The vegetation seeks to generate a kind of green envelope that serves to reduce the heat in the summer months. Thus, the folds and contours of the square are the key to the landscaping and sustainability of the project. This is because, with the folds, the exposed surface of the square increases, which helps to reduce the temperature on hot days. Second, the square has 110 atomizers that irrigate the vegetation; the excess water flows through the small collection channels and is stored in two rainwater tanks that return the water to the watering cans by recycling it.
In short, this project stands out for something beyond form, landscaping or sustainability: it is a private initiative, worthy of being referenced, of free access to the citizens of Copenhagen. Small gardens of buildings, waste spaces and complex corners of towers, among others, could elevate their status from empty space, idle and vacant to a space rich in use, vegetation and opportunities, with only a few folds of the ground and a attractive and strategic form.

SLA: Architects
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Budget: 4,850,000 Euros
Area: 7,300 m2
Year of the project: 2010

Available in: www.archdaily.com.br/br/01-169717. Accessed in: 10/30/2018.