Enghave Park receives the City of Copenhagen’s Building Prize2020 in the category ‘Urban Environment’. The award is given for Third Nature’s climate park design, as well as for the reconstruction of Arne Jacobsen’s stalls.

Copenhagen has awarded architects and builders for the most remarkable architecture since 1903 and the prize is thus one of the oldest of its kind in Denmark.

The evaluation committee writes:

“Enghave Climate Park has been chosen because it is a beautiful renewal and a cloudburst protection of the existing protected park, which has been updated with new features in respect of the original design. This is a difficult task which has been well executed.

The climate park itself is a whole sample collection of cloudburst protection solutions, which is integrated into the urban space. It has been able to elevate a necessary cloudburst protection to aesthetic qualities and give new functions to urban life. The new water basins and cloudburst elements in concrete give the park a robust expression but have tactile qualities in the concrete’s aggregate and detail.”

Enghave Climate Park has been carried out with great respect for the original historical architecture, and at the same time the project manages to redefine the original park life by designing a new layer of urban space for movement.”

About the project

The historic Enghave Park has been transformed and is now Copenhagen’s largest climate project. With a 22,600 m3 (6M gallons) water reservoir, the park responds to future water challenges. The challenges are positively transformed into a wide range of new living, sensory and movement options to be used both for everyday life and in case of cloudbursts.

The new atmospheric water management elements open up to a pragmatic, sensual and aesthetic narrative, which hopefully can give rise to new reflections on the climate. When the next extreme rain event occupies the park’s all 35,000 m2 in one coherent water table, it represents both a water technological and architectural feat and nature’s return in the form of a new type of urban metabolism.

Enghave Climate Park is designed for the City of Copenhagen, HOFOR and The Area Renewal Vesterbro by COWI, THIRD NATURE and Platant. The main contractor is Hoffman A/S and the architect of the stalls is Bertelsen & Scheving APS.

Read more about the project and see the other winners.