HafenCity, Hamburg DE
KCAP, 2000 - present
Hamburg’s HafenCity currently represents Europe’s largest innercity development project. The new urban district, with a total area of around 150 hectares, is surrounded by river and canal channels on all sides. By the middle of the twenty-twenties, it is envisaged to provide new residential space for up to 12,000 people, as well as create 40,000 new jobs.
At the beginning of the nineteen-nineties, it became clear that the docks, then almost 100 years old, were unsuitable for handling large, modern ships. As a result, the container terminal was relocated to the Old Elbe Tunnel. Extension of port facilities focused on increasing capacity in the western part of the city. The newly defunct area’s prime inner-city location meant that a unique opportunity for new urban planning had opened up. Following an urban master-planning competition, the development concept together with the master-plan for the conversion of the edge of the port district and extension of the inner city of Hamburg to this location was published in 2000. A total of eleven district sectors as outlined in the original master-plan are to be successively realized from west to east and from north to south.
The Sandtorkai is the first district to be realized, consisting of five residential and three office buildings, the Tall Ship Harbor and a promenade below the cantilevered buildings. The Kaiserkai is the second realized district sector, located on the headland between the Sandtorhafen and the Grasbrookhafen. What makes this district sector special is its urban density, diverse architecture, the promenades and squares by the water, as well as the Elbphilharmonie at the Kaispeicher.
At the end of the Sandtordock, lies the district sector of Am Sandtorpark/Grasbrook which is characterized by mixed-use developments that include large office buildings, residential buildings and a school, all grouped around leafy Sandtorpark.
The neighboring overseas district sector at the Magdeburg Port is being developed along the overseas boulevard which traverses the entire length of the sector from north to south. The fourteen buildings lining the boulevard house retail businesses and restaurants, both on the first and second floors. The northern part is dedicated to apartments, the southern part to offices. A cruise terminal, a hotel, the Waterfront Towers, the Science Center, and the new metro line U4 are some of the main attractions of this sector.
The HafenCity is becoming a lively urban quarter with apartments, shops, parks, promenades, offices, nursery schools, and recreational as well as tourism facilities. The design of the team comprising ASTOC, Kees Christiaanse, and Hamburgplan, impresses on account of its wide range of urban planning typologies, permitting diverse urban quarters and a phased implementation. The HafenCity opens up towards the Speicherstadt, allowing for excellent interlinkages between the old and the new city, and offering attractive new living spaces by the inner harbor and the Elbe River. ASTOC firmly believes that good procedural support has more benefits to offer than the conventional practice of simply adhering to a “design manual”. Architectural knowledge enables us to anticipate and positively shape the consequences of urban planning interventions for the architecture that they involve. The first and most important factor for gauging potential future building activity is the question of access. This is where design comes in: in the said project, it has turned the structures that ran parallel to the Elbe River by ninety degrees. The middle part, the overseas quarter, hence does not become a continuation of the Speicherstadt, but opens up the HafenCity towards the Elbe River and the inner city. The overseas quarter has been envisaged as new center of the HafenCity where retail business is focused and which has great urban charisma due to the nearby Magdeburg Port, almost placing it in direct competition with the sophisticated Binnenalster.
In order to create discretely independent urban quarters, the urban magnets were not located around the center but in an outer and inner triangle, precisely placing buildings that would be able to shape the different quarters with their dedicated functions.
Competition: 1999
Project start: 1999
Completion: 2030
Gross floor area: 153 ha
Client: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH and Freie- und Hansestadt Hamburg
Architect: KCAP Architects&Planners, Rotterdam / Hamburgplan AG
