The City Dune / SEB Bank

Turning a bank's headquarter into a generous, playful, and climate-adapted public place.

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Line Agnes Bjørløw Skjærlund

Head of Business Development, Associate Partner

Location

Copenhagen, Denmark

Size

7,300 m2

Year

2007 — 2011

Client

SEB Bank and Pension

Role

Lead landscape architect

Partners & Collaborators

Lundgaard & Tranberg, Rambøll

The City Dune is a green and welcoming public space for employees of SEB Bank’s Copenhagen headquarters and an inviting place for local citizens to enjoy.

SLA has created the iconic urban space that connects the two buildings, making up SEB Bank’s Danish headquarters. As well as being an obvious place for the employees at SEB Bank to socialize and enjoy their lunch, the City Dune quickly became a popular public destination for recreational activities and stays on both workdays and weekends.

fig. 1
fig. 2

The City Dune is designed with a terrain that rises from street level to second-floor height, covering the roof of the bank’s parking garage. Its big, folding movement is inspired by the sand dunes of Northern Denmark and the snow dunes of the Scandinavian winter.

The 300 meters of winding ramps foster a new relationship between the urban space and the two office buildings situated at different levels. When passing through the area, the space evolves and opens in different directions, creating new spatial connections in the process. Despite the 7 meters height difference, the space is fully accessible and allows wheelchair users, pedestrians, and cyclists alike an opportunity for recreation along the route.

fig. 4 The City Dune is constructed as a green roof atop the bank's parking garage.
fig. 3
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“SEB is living proof that you can create value with urban space. The branding value of our landscape is five times bigger than what a regular branding campaign with the same budget could have given us.”

— Peter Høltermand, CEO of SEB, Arkitekten March 2011

The City Dune is Copenhagen’s first climate-adapted urban space. All rainwater is collected and re-used for irrigation and cooling of the urban space in summer. Thus, no rainwater ends up in the sewers or on the roads. The Nordic vegetation and trees provide shade on hot summer days and shelter when it rains as well as providing SEB Bank with a strong and unique Nordic identity.

The contour of the terrain not only handles functional and technical demands from drainage, accessibility, lighting, and the creation of a root-friendly bearing layer. It also offers a variety of routes for employees and clients of SEB as well as ordinary Copenhageners, creating an ever-changing urban space.

fig. 7 The project borrows its big, folding movement from the sand dunes of Northern Denmark and the snow dunes of the Scandinavian winter.
fig. 8 The dunes of Råbjerg Mile in Northern Jutland.

Fundamentals

Have a look into the fundamentals of our office

fund. 26

Sound

“Sound. The soundtrack of our lives often passes us by without us noticing. But I have begun noticing the poetry of the noises around me. The rhythm and the song of the poet. The calling…

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fund. 20

Sakuteiki
– The Book of Garden

Sakuteki – The Book of Garden is a manual, a textbook for Japanese gardeners in the 11th century. This introduction sounds like this: “In making the garden, you should first understand the overall principles. According…

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fund. 25

Roots

“A tree consists of three parts: Its foliage, its trunk, and its roots. All three parts are important for the aesthetic feeling of nature. But of these three I find the roots most intriguing, most…

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fund. 12

Mist

Mist is a phenomenon caused by small droplets of water suspended in air. Physically, it is an example of a dispersion. It is most commonly seen where warm, moist air meets sudden cooling, such as…

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fund. 19

Essay: The Bark Room

“Bark is both living and dead, growing and cracking, a shell, a protective layer and an integral part of the wood’s tissue. It’s the bark structure and the way it peels, which separates the different…

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fund. 27

White

“In the beginning was chaos. While the universe began to expand after Big Bang it also decreased in temperature. It became more and more ordered. With that order, the Universe changed its background colour toward…

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fund. 26

Atmosphere

“Atmosphere is a thin film of enclosure around our world. Without our vaporous, water filled atmosphere, life on Earth – or indeed life anywhere – would not exist. But atmosphere is also what you sense…

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