Novo Nordisk
Nature Park

Inspired by Scandinavian nature, SLA has created a unique public park with maximum nature value and minimal maintenance. The nature park provides a strong, green brand and a recreational destination for both employees at the new Novo Nordisk Headquarters, visitors, and residents to enjoy.

The new headquarters for Novo Nordisk houses the health care company’s top management and 1,100 administrative staff members. The surrounding landscape interprets the Scandinavian forest and hilly dead ice-topography and creates a stress-relieving and recreational outdoor space for the employees.

The park holds a 100% water balance, which means that all rainwater falling in the area and on the building is collected and reused for irrigation of the park’s many large trees and diverse vegetation. This makes the landscape robust towards climate change and it provides both an ecological value and great cost savings.

The nature park’s planting scheme shows a wide palette of native plants. More than 2,000 new trees will over time grow into clearly defined small ’forests’ and self-regulating biotopes. The vegetation is designed to have a wild expression and evolve with natural succession and minimal care. The park trails are designed to provide the user with the greatest possible experience – spatially, topographic and textural. They are tailored to give a sensuous variation of light, shadow, colors and sounds. The curved courses of the paths provide varied and unpredictable experiences in the daily transit through the park from one building to another.

Novo Nordisk Nature Park offers an informal green frame for both the indoor and outdoor lives of the employees. Here, the boundaries between work and leisure are erased when nature experiences become a daily part of the everyday life at Novo Nordisk. The area’s biodiversity is monitored, and rare species of insects have been found in what used to be a parking lot in a grey, industrial area.