Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Grønningen-Bispeparken
Here is sponge city design at its very best. Originally conceived as a modernist paradise by Danish landscape architect Carl Theodor Sørensen, Grønningen-Bispeparken had become an underused, overgrown flat park prone to flooding. When it came to overhauling the site, which is sandwiched between social housing blocks in Copenhagen’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhood, Danish firm SLA abandoned notions of a manicured public space in favour of a democratic plan guided by naturalistic elements — adapting the setting to climate change and making it as lush as can be.
At the start of a five-year process, SLA found area residents bitterly divided over the park’s future. Its renewal would become a bridge for connection between them. This is exemplified in Kerstin Bergendal’s long-term art project Concerning a Meadow, which began by documenting informal stakeholder meetings and workshops throughout the build and resulted in open wood sculptures that now occupy the environment as a kind of civic record, high-lighting that climate and social vulnerability share the same ground, and that flood protection in low-income neighbourhoods is a form of equity.
Central to the revamp, SLA gently sloped the park to create 18 bioswales — native-planted channels that slow, filter and infiltrate up to 3,000 cubic metres of stormwater; when they’re not filled with rain, the bioswales turn into “social swales.” Completing the resilient new landscape are wetland zones to attract wildlife, dry biotopes for play, open lawns for events, intimate “pocket squares” for social meetups, and hills built over former Cold War bunkers for summertime sun decks and wintertime sledding slopes. The park orients toward Grundtvig’s Church at one end, its pathways, rest areas and furniture clad in matching yellow tiles and recycled materials from the city.
Just five days after its opening, a major storm flooded parts of Copenhagen. The bioswales activated as planned, converting stormwater into irrigation and keeping the surrounding neighbourhood dry. Over four million seeds and 149 trees of 23 species had been planted. The park had already proved its point.
Team: Alexandra Vindfeld Hansen, Sune Rieper and Bjørn Ginman (SLA); Esben Iversen (NIRAS); Kerstin Bergendal
