COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
In the Danish capital, a historic park is redesigned to include built-in flood absorption — without infringing on any of its charm
“Everybody in Copenhagen remembers where they were on July 2, 2011,” says Flemming Rafn, cofounder of the design practice Tredje Natur. On that day, the Danish capital saw a flood so severe that it turned streets into canals and temporarily transformed the city into a Scandinavian Venice. To avoid a repeat of that catastrophe, the municipality sought to build new infrastructure that would absorb or store floodwater at the low points of various rain catchment areas. One such region, however, was already occupied by Enghaveparken, a neoclassical park with fountains, promenades and sports amenities, plus two pavilions and a bandstand by modernist legend Arne Jacobsen.
“In theory, we could scrape off the entire surface of the park and lower everything,” says Rafn, whose firm won the commission to turn the site into a flood zone. But that, of course, was out of the question. Instead, Rafn redesigned the park’s hockey quad, fountain and rose garden so that each now sits several metres below grade. During so-called 10-year storms, water will flow — via a network of gutters — into these sunken areas individually, flooding the hockey quad first, then the fountain and then, finally, the rose garden. During 100-year storms, however, the entire park will become a basin, as its perimeter is now bounded by movable walls containing subterranean concrete shafts outfitted with buoyant steel boxes. When floodwater surpasses the rose-garden level, it will enter the boxes at select entry points and cause the walls to float upward, sealing the perimeter and creating enough of an enclosure to hold more than 22,000 cubic metres of water. (Jacobsen’s pavilions and bandstand would remain above the deluge.)
Until recently, such occurrences would have been rare, but those 10-year storms may soon be annual events and 100-year storms could happen several times a decade. The new Enghaveparken is built to manage such phenomena but not to hide them. When the space suddenly transforms into the world’s largest bird bath, the effect should be profound. “The design evokes the transformative power of water,” says Rafn. “It also invites people to reflect on where that water came from. If we don’t see the physical consequences of climate change, we will have a difficult time grasping it.”