Amager Bakke
Copenhill Rooftop Park

Turning technical infrastructure into a social, sustainable and biodiverse asset for the entire City of Copenhagen.

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Rasmus Grandelag

Studio Manager SLA Copenhagen, Partner

Location

Copenhagen, Denmark

Size

35,000 m2 nature park

Year

2016 — 2019

Client

Amager Ressourcecenter (ARC) and Fonden Amager Bakke

Role

Full service landscape architecture

Partners & Collaborators

BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group, MOE, Malmos A/S

SLA’s design of a green rooftop park for Copenhagen’s new waste-to-energy plant combines hiking trails, playgrounds, vantage points, climbing walls and street fitness – along with a 500+ meter ski slope. All of it designed within a wild and sensuous mountain nature with plants, rockscapes, 7000 bushes and 300 trees.

fig. 1 Arrival of the first trees. June 2018.
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The experimenting use of the steep pitched roof places high demands on the plant and landscape design. With SLA’s solution, the challenges have been solved through a range of nature-based design solutions and 1:1 tests of vegetation and materials. The planting is specially chosen to meet the challenging living conditions and create optimal micro-climate and wind conditions.

The result is a lush, biodiverse, and robust nature design that provides the visitors with the opportunity to use the park all year round and a sensuous and varied environment for all the activities of the park.

“Amager Bakke acts as a generous ‘green bomb’ that will radically green-up the adjacent industrial area. Copenhill Rooftop Park becomes the home for birds, bees, butterflies and flowers, creating a vibrant green pocket and forming a completely new urban ecosystem for the city of Copenhagen.”

— Rasmus Astrup, Partner & Design Principal, SLA.
fig. 7 SLA’s biologists have monitored the biodiversity of Copenhill since its inauguration in 2019. At the latest investigation in 2020, 119 different plant and tree species were observed. That is 56 more species than the year before.
fi. 8 Seed dispersal tactics

Awards received for the project

2020      Design That Educates Award in the category ‘Architectural Design’
2020      ArchDaily Building of the Year Award
2019      EcoTechGreen Award in the category ‘Green Technology and Green Infrastructure’
2019      Scandinavian Green Roof Award 

Creating innovative green roofs is a service we have developed over the last 10 years in SLA. SLA was also the recipient of The Scandinavian Green Roof Award in 2017 for SUND Nature Park/The Panum Institute, in 2016 for Egedal City Hall, and in 2014 for Novo Nordisk Landscape Park.

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