Grønningen-Bispeparken
Copenhagen’s latest and most radical nature-based climate adaptation project where rain is not seen as a threat – but as a natural resource to be celebrated.
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Bjørn Ginman
Senior Lead Designer, Project Director, Landscape Architect MAA MDL
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Size
20,000 m2
Year
2020 — 2024
Client
The City of Copenhagen
Role
Lead Landscape Architect
Partners & Collaborators
HOFOR, Niras, Kerstin Bergendal, Efterland, Ebbe Dalsgaard
Challenges
Services
Grønningen-Bispeparken is Copenhagen’s latest and most radical nature-based climate adaptation project. By letting form follow nature, we have turned 20,000 m2 of barren lawn into a new lush, playful, and art-filled urban nature park.
Designed to contain up to 3,000 m3 of rain in 18 specially designed ‘social basins,’ in Grønningen-Bispeparken rain is not seen as a threat – but as a natural resource to be celebrated.
The park has been designed with the strong involvement of the local community. Together with artist Kerstin Bergendal, SLA’s Social Design Team of anthropologists and geographers has collaborated with the area’s many residents and stakeholders to ensure that the park is relevant and meaningful for all.
Grønningen-Bispeparken is designed with specially designed planting, trees, and bioswales that can handle heavy stormwater events without flooding basements and apartments. The park’s city nature is designed to strengthen the local biodiversity, with the hilly landscape creating habitats for varied and rich wildlife.
When they are not filled with rain, the 18 bioswales are turned into ‘social swales’ that create a vibrant and lush setting for a wide range of residents’ social activities, games, and relaxation. In the public orchard, you can find the season’s harvest, Tagensbo School can use the park for play and learning, and children and grownups can play or relax on the wooden art elements created by Kerstin Bergendal in collaboration with Efterland.
“Wild, poetic, and very sensuous. The feeling of walking has been accentuated in a multitude of ways that I can't remember having experienced in any other recent park.”
— Karsten Ifversen, Architecure Critic in Danish daily Politiken
The open views towards Grundtvig’s Church – which was also the essence of the original park design by C.Th. Sørensen – have been preserved, and the existing trees and planting have been retained as far as possible.
In addition, the existing planting has been supplemented with a host of varied, local city nature, which invites children and playful souls to explore and use the park together.
With the new Grønningen-Bispeparken, we bring the 1950s ideal of nature, fresh air, and play into the 21st century. All for the benefit of the local residents, the City of Copenhagen, and nature itself.
