URBANPLANEN STAGE 2

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Based on the human and natural qualities and resources that already exist in “Urbanplanen”, TREDJE NATUR has planned the final piece of “Urbanplanen”. With our proposal – “Bulderbyen” we have created a very special and powerful tale about a unique urban environment where the story is not about the optimization of prefabricated constructions but about the people and the courage to draw an obligating community.

Project information
Responsible partner: Ole Schrøder
Design team: Dennis Rasmussen, Sofie Askholm Ibsen, Martin Trier Risom, Gustav Bangsbo, Mette Fast, Lars Vinther, Katrine Sandstrøm, Karolina Anna Mieszczanek, Viktor Becker, Tom Fairley, Sol Hernandez, Angels Garcia Andreu, Filip Heim, Frederik Reese, Kirstine Lorentsen, Vincent Matzmorr, Teresina Ho, Rune Wriedt and Viktor Forchhammer Mortensen
Client: Copenhagen municipality
Project: Urbanplanen Etape 2
Location: Sundby, Copenhagen, Denmark
Type: Development plan, building design, retail, renovation of library, daycare institutions, urban space and landscape
Area: 19.500 m² housing, retail and institutions + 30.000 m² landscape
Team: TREDJE NATUR, JAJA, EKJ Rådgivende Ingeniører and
Anoir Hassouni
Period: 2016
Status: 1. prize, ongoing

We have designed settlements with unique housing qualities, which is developed in the interaction between varying outdoor spaces, and an eventful urban nature that creates the framework for a special everyday life of the residents, users and many children in the area. Our vision for “Bulderbyen” is to create a place, where the buildings and the urban nature creates a strong social connection that will feed the extrovert social encounters between the people in “Urbanplanen’s” public sphere and the good everyday life for the individual family.

The main ingredients are diversity and composition in an overall structuring grip where the many common features on the ground floor contributes to activate the urban and residential life at eye level. “Bulderby” turns in some way the traditional housing block inside out, in the ambition to continue to develop “Urbanplanen” as a joint affair.

In a relational and special masterplan, ”Bulderbyen” is intergraded in the rest of the city by infrastructural grips as well as new recreational offers, attractions and amenity.

A versatile housing in both typology and expression creates the basis for a diverse residential band and a distinctive neighborhood where you can both feel at home and want to go for a walk as a visitor. With the new stores and extroverted after-school care, we are creating an active interaction between urban space and landscape in an inviting and safe neighborhood.

The overall structure of the building plots is a reinterpretation of the traditional Copenhagen city apartment block, with a well-defined allocation between courtyard and street spaces. Through subdivisions of different materials, rhythms, volumes and functions in the building structures, we create attractive zones, inviting niches and a good microclimate in the outdoor spaces, where everyday life can unfold. By programming the ground floors with common features of strategy and visible corners, we achieve a kind of urban “Klondike” that contributes to the broad variation in the individual buildings expression.

Active functions as supermarkets, retail shops, child-care, school and leisure activities contributes to an invitational approach where people are directed into the area where they will activate the courtyards and street spaces. The active programs is located on the ground floor partly to accommodate maximum access to outdoor spaces but also to ensure the greatest possible number of eyes on the urban spaces.

URBAN LIFE AND NATURE
The general idea of the master plan is to create a closely built structure with varied urban characters and spaces with good possibilities for urban life and urban nature. The qualities in the area is regained through a variation of building sizes, façade expression and outdoor spaces between the buildings.

There are big and small spaces, passageways, gates, courtyards, squares and natural areas, which is interwoven between the precisely defined building volumes that varies in height, type and expression. Changes and offsets provide a good recognition of place and identity with a clear focus on the relationships between inside and outside and between the private and public areas. Edge zones – such as gardens – is treated conscious in relation to the location and solar orientation.

PROGRAMMING
After-school care and youth Centre – are located in the blue / green sports and activity landscape with close connection to “Dyvekeskolen”. The after-school care is a part of the active facade row along the new “Urmagersti” and helps to support the “Urbanpladsen” as the area’s new centre.

The special after-school care – is located as a southern extension to “Dyvekeskolen” where the location secures a safe base for the building where it will create many possibilities to engage in meetings and communities across groups and ages. The direct connection to “Dyvekeskolen” provides an optimal environment for a multi-functional use of the square meters.

Supermarkets and retail stores – is placed next to the “Røde Mellemvej” and along “Urmagerstien”. Placed here, the shops have a great opportunity to attract passers-by in the local area by activating the area in front of the store and the edge zones for store display, sales and outdoor cafe seating.

The Youth Club – placed in a new distinctive tower on top of the existing media library, where it as a glowing lantern will constitute as a landmark for the whole neighborhood. By linking the club directly to the library, we provide the best conditions for everyone and make them feel invited into the premises, which can contribute to a multi-functional and well-integrated nightlife scene.

URBAN NATURE AND LANDSCAPE
”Urmagerstien” – ”Bulderby” and ”Dyvekeskolen” are cemented together with the existing building mass in “Urbanplanen” through the street “Urmagerstien”. “Urmagerstien” spans between three anchor points, which invites the whole area inside.

“The welcoming Square” – towards “Rød Mellemvej”, appears trough a reprocessing of the northernmost building block where the corner gives room for a generous space creation that breaks down the linear monotony of the “Rød Mellemvej” and offers a break while you are invited into the neighborhood.

“The skate park” – The previously closed and dismissive school façade is activated towards Englandsvej, and is integrated as a part of a new concrete landscape, with space for planting and stays.

A processing of the landscape gives an opportunity to remove the walls in favor of smooth transitions that invites to stays. The skate park is located on a corner that secures the enrollment in the park in a sports activity field together with the tracks across the road at Sundby sportspark.

“Urbanpladsen” – is the nerve center that connects the new urban spaces and landscape spaces – “Regnbåndet” and “Urmagerstien” – up on the movement to and from “Remiseparken” and along “Remisevej”. The square is shaped based on the short stays where the square is used as a transit space before approaching one of the neighboring programs, and the longer stays, where people can stay while nature and life is observed. The site also invites to major events and joint activities that gather the neighborhood.

The area south of the school is extended so it spans across “Regnbåndet” and becomes an integral part of the new after-school outdoor spaces. Activities, play and learning is the key words here. By tying the after-school facilities together with the school, we create a natural exchange and interaction between them. “Læringsdækket” is designed as an extension through the school’s current exits to the landscape and acts as a direct link between the landscape and the school’s interior. Enrolled in “Læringsdækket” we create special activities such as organized sports, kitchen gardens and stages.

The ambition for ”Bulderby” is a neighborhood in water balance where the water is perceived as a unique natural phenomenon that actively and visibly contributes to an eventful day. Therefor, “Regnbåndet” is the backbone of the project’s landscape shaping.

It runs from “Røde Mellemvej” along “Urmagerstien”, across at the Church Square and through the green area at the after-school care facilities with visible pick-up basins and runs further south of the school before it ends with an emergency overflow at “Englandsvej”. Enrolled in the plan as ponds and small lakes, the water basins will be distinctive elements in the plan and create identity and major attractions even in dry weather. The surrounding green park will consist of a lush and wild nature, where care-intensive lawns is replaced with open meadow, which has much higher biodiversity and more variety throughout the year. This will be an attraction to go for a walk for the areas residents and for schoolchildren to botanize and learn about the wild Danish wild flora and fauna. Excess soil from the construction are used to reshape the terrain, so it can also offers gentle hills that invites running, toddling or tobogganing for the smallest children in the winter time.

“URBANPLADSEN”
“Urmagerstien” and “Urbanpladsen” will have a unified identity in its physical appearance, but will at the same time offer different spatial experiences programs and adventures. The area is tied together by a simple coating of light concrete slab with a simple variation of surface treatment. The coating is also used on the road to help underline that the road is not a traditional road but a place for bikes and pedestrians, play, breaks and focus. The western part of “Urmagerstien” is a green and wide area with shop life and opportunity for play and rests. “Urbanpladsen” is to become a trinity of tree different urban spaces. The public space in front of the new Solvang Neighborhood is becoming the district’s large venue.

As the focal point of the square, a distinctive sundial is placed with vertical gnomon and a luminous dial, as a landmark that ties up the story about “Urmagerstien”.

In front of the main entrance of the school, the existing forecourt is to become a new attractive urban space and a place where children and young people can play and relax before and after school. In front of the main entrance to the church, you will find a distinctive green and blue urban space where there is room to relax and observe nature’s changeability.

AFTER SCHOOL
The after school care has a large potential to give ”Bulderbykvarteret” its own special character. The activities in and around the child care offers will help to create a very special urban life and atmosphere, where children will play in the new streets and landscape and contribute to an active and vibrant everyday life. The goal has been to create as many synergies and interaction between the facilities, the school and resident areas as possible. Therefore, the five facilities for children is located so that they convey the transition between the city, school, library and landscape.

The new after school care and youth club is located along “Spektakelmagergade”, where it along with “Solvang Kirke” and “Dyvekeskolen” actively encloses the northern part of “Regnbåndet”. By this, the maximum contact to the green surroundings and the exchange between the school and after school care are created. The activities in the facilities involves the entire plan due to the location of the buildings while it makes all the citizens and visitors a part of the facilities everyday life.

ACTIVE SURROUNDINGS
The after-school care and school must be alive and active all year round on all possible times a day. They should look toward their surroundings and extend the activities inside to the outside, and vice versa let life outside be a natural part of the activities inside. The roof of the after-school care and the youth club’s plinth is part of the facilities’ active outdoor area. The roof offers a spectacular view over “Spetakelmagergaden”, “Regnbåndet” and “Læringsdækket” four meters above the ground.

The stairs towards “Urmagerstien” works as a “waving staircase” for small children waving goodbye to their parents in the morning. Towards the activity landscape, there are slides and variating staircases that creates new ways to move. Tied together by “Læringsdækket” the new facilities calls for play, games and breaks though recesses and integrated outdoor activities.

LIBRARY RENOVATION
The library’s existing courtyard are covered with a glass roof, by which the library’s heart becomes a greenhouse with exotic vegetation and a quiet reading garden in a very special atmosphere with lots of light and heat all year round.

The library, the “neighborhood house” and the youth club share the same foyer, but each program can act independently in the case of events and other activities.

To plan the final piece of the Urban Plan commits. The development of the new neighborhood needs to be adaptive and designed with a social and climatic approach and a sense of resource balance in mind, where the cultivated and the natural are united.

A project where new good stories about living and using “Urbanplanen” are created and a neighborhood with fertile soil for an emerging everyday life in the modernist cultural landscape, we all know so well.

Well on it’s way towards a third nature. The winning proposal is like a meteor strike in the functionally divided city

Boris Brorman Jensen in The Architect

It is captivatingly futuristic and, alongside the other comparatively simple schemes, speculates just how advanced we could be if we hadn’t neglected our urban waterways for so long.

Financial Times on HOW

A jury member described it as ‘academic hippie platitudes – plenty of feel-good, but completely unnecessarily high readability index’.
The most original is in the solutions presented. Not least what a jury member call ‘the Big Rainwater Penis’.

Creative Business Cup jury

The winning project of the Europan competition presents a visionary proposal for how we draw nature back into the city and utilize the qualities that it can give to the cityscape.

City Architect of Copenhagen, Tina Saaby

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