RiverCity Gothenburg
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Client: RiverCity Gothenburg
Team: Stig L. Andersson, Mette Skjold, Katrine Sandstrøm
Collaborators: Henning Larsen Architects, Orbicon, Social Action
Design phase:2011
Area: 400 ha.
The City of Gothenburg is facing a new era, when the city's future center will be built across the Göta River. The city has to deal with large and diverse areas of the city – and challenges of social, environmental and economic character. Therefore, the City Council started the project ‘RiverCity Gothenburg’ to develop a vision and strategy for the city's future development.
SLA - together with Henning Larsen Architects, Orbicon and Social Action - was selected to participate in the international workshop that started off the RiverCity project. In total 10 international teams had been selected among 85 applicants.
The multidisciplinary, international workshop was held in the center of Gothenburg from 7-11. June 2011. Here the SLA lead team was able to take in the city at eye level - and had the opportunity to consult a broad range of local experts in all conceivable aspects of city life. In addition, the workshop was facilitated by a competent advisory board, who ensured that all teams were sharing their ideas and work rather than competing.
As part of this work, team SLA chose to do a live blog, making it possible to follow the team during the workshop. The five-day workshop ended with a presentation to citizens of Gothenburg. Subsequently, each team went home and summarized its work, before finally handing it over to the RiverCity.
TEAM SLA_HLA’s vision of the 21st century city of Gothenburg.
Not only is the city centre of Gothenburg facing dramatic flooding, Gothenburg is also a city consisting of small communities that don’t really interact. Team SLA_HLA’s objective is to turn the biggest challenges of Gothenburg into urban opportunities and qualities. We address the climate change and the cultural segregation and confront this with a bottom-up, easy-to-get-started-on, embracing strategy.
Quality of urban life as key to economic growth
The keywords headlining the RiverCity workshop were “Green”, “Inclusive” and “Dynamic” – meaning in short that the new city development should focus on environmental, social and economic issues in order to ensure sustainability. Team SLA_HLA chose to arrange the keywords in a new equation: Green = Inclusive = Dynamic. Green spaces improve the environment – thus providing attractive recreational areas for people to meet across social barriers – and finally resulting in an overall more attractive city, providing the basis of city development and economic growth.
Qualifying the equation on 3 spots
We have qualified our equation by making a sketch design on 3 locations; Skeppsbron, Frihamnen and new Älvbron.
1. Start small on Monday at Skeppsbron
We suggest to start Monday on Skeppsbron, creating a temporary landscape turning the parking lots into a recreational area after work hours. Imagine the experience of parking on a tennis court, next to a green house with lemon trees! The learning from urban design will fit in to a long-term development of the area, including dike protection, recreational landscape as well as new urban development.
2. Frihamnen park
When Gothenburg in 1921 had 300 years anniversary, 10 parks were made in the city centre. In 10 years time Gothenburg can celebrate its 400 years anniversary and our suggestion is to design a river park in the Free Harbour for this event as a gift to the city.
The location is in the center of the city and can be the future ‘green lung’ of Gothenburg, where the agility of the water is integrated in the design of the park. Central park in NYC results in improved microclimate and sky high real estate value around the edge of the park. It is our intention to make the Free Harbour Park a dynamic asset to economic growth, better air quality, greater biodiversity and an inclusive environment for both citizens on the north and south side of the river.
3. New Göta Älvbron
The New Göta Älvbron will be a physical manifest on where north and south meets. This meeting should designed as a bridge-city, a public shared space for the citizens of Gothenburg both from the north and south side of the Göta Älv. New Göta Älvbron ought to celebrate Gothenburg as a 21 st century city, manifesting the city connecting north and south, and letting Älvsborgsbron keep the status as the gate to the rest of the world.
