Anchor Park in Malmö
Location: Västre Hamnen, Malmö, Sweden
Client: Malmö City
Team: Stig L. Andersson, Hans Kragh, J.P.Berglund, Christian Restorff Liliegreen, Hanne Bruun Møller, Stine Poulsen
Design phase: 2000
Construction: 2001
Area: 2,9 ha.
Cost of construction: 4 mill €
Exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2002 and 2004.
Nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2003.
Article: "An Urban Awakening to the Sense of Life" by Professor Michel Conan (pdf)
With Ankar Park in the new quarter Västra Hamnen in Malmø, a luxuriant living park has been created, that functions as an open, attractive city space for everyone. The quarter has been constructed around the old industrial harbour with the same name. The park gives the buildings sensory delights and changes with the seasons and uses. A new type of city park has been created, a hydroglyph park. Inspired by the diversity of Swedish nature, different types of biotopes have been established such as alder marshes, oak woods and salt-water biotopes with crayfish – spaces that merge into each other and spaces that invite play and contemplation.
The park invests the area with a different sense of time. Subtle changes that can be registered every day, which allow for new experiences with sharpened attention and an increased sense of presence.
Reliefs are impressed into the concrete along the canal. Here the rainwater is collected that falls in these parts 113 days a year. The changing nature of the area is manifested by the amount of rainwater and mirroring in the many pools on the perimeter.
The perimeter consists of 1 km in situ cast concrete, that with its winding course creates extra space and increases time spent there. Swedish granite boulders and conical stumps for seating are placed on the perimeter, and inter-changing layers of grasses form a composition of varied patches. Each patch has its own form: no two are alike.
