After Bilbao, the office received invitations from cities all over the world, hoping that we could repeat the ‘miracle’ with the design of another ‘iconic’ building. However, the office considered the so-called ‘Bilbao effect’ to be the consequence of an holistic urban vision by the Basque government rather than the imposition of a single new trophy building. In this context, the master plan proposal for the waterfront in Sønderborg, Denmark provided a great opportunity to advance this idea that investment in arts and culture might be deployed to stimulate a broader urban revival.
I had never heard of Sønderborg before we began work on the project. Through the client, I learnt that Sønderborg is a Danish city close to the border with Germany - and that its natural harbor is a popular sailing spot for locals and visitors alike during the warmer summer months.
I arrived in Sønderborg for the first time in a chilly and drizzly spring day, only to discover the two most prominent modern buildings were the hospital complex and the university on opposite sides of the harbor. Their monolithic massing was grossly out of scale with the rest of the city. I realized that the reality of Sonderborg is quite different than the naïve mental picture I had prior to the visit, and that it would be a huge challenge ahead to achieve the urban transformation that the city desired.
Once again, we invited a team of city officials to our office in Los Angeles for a series of workshops. Using the color-coded building blocks familiar to the initial stages of our design process, we explored various programmatic scenarios intended to activate the city’s waterfront.
Together, we developed close to twenty alternative schemes. The final master plan combined positive attributes and key principles from each one of the schemes into a single coherent vision for the urban water front.
In order to mediate between the monumental scale of the existing hospital and university buildings at opposite sides of the harbor, we re-conceptualized Sønderborg harbor as a kind of urban eco-system, with distinct and overlapping zones of programmatic activities knitted together to create a heterogeneous yet coherent urban experience.
To forge a new identity for the city’s waterfront, we conceived the area as a new linear urban park; book-ended by the existing drawbridge to the south, and by a new pedestrian bridge completing the promenade around the waterfront to the north.
The team collaborated with landscape architect Melinda Taylor to populate the park with trees, flowers and other planting suitable for every season, including the city’s harsh winter months. We also provided space within the new park for a variety of activities: tennis and swimming in the summer; cross-country skiing and ice-skating in the winter. An amphitheater within the park provided an anchor attraction at the northern end of the waterfront promenade.
At the heart of the master plan area we proposed the creation of a new city square, to be located at the terminus of Sønderborg’s main commercial street.
The city’s main library and entertainment complex would serve as the cultural anchors for this square. At the southern end of the waterfront strip we proposed a high-end residential building standing guard over the marina like a lighthouse. To the north, a new residential building for affordable housing is located in a park-like setting.
At the water edge of the Urban Square are a 150-room hotel and a branded office building. They are separated from the Urban Square by a waterway, and are accessible by pedestrian bridges or by boat. Conceived as an Island, the spaces in the hotel and the office enjoy panoramic harbor views. We hope that the architecture of this Island would become the new focal point of the Sonderborg waterfront.
In order to ensure that sunlight would penetrate into the new city square, we made a series of sun-shading diagrams to study the effect of the massing of the new ‘island’ on the adjacent open spaces.
The new Sønderborg master plan offered some 60,000 SM of new development across a 13-acre site. Despite offering specific massing and zoning strategies for the area, the master plan did not prescribe any specific architectural type or style. The city hopes to realize the vision proposed by the master plan in phases, with architectural competitions to be held for the various building zones to be designed by different architects over the course of the coming years.
The projects in this section were designed and executed during my time at Gehry Partners LLP (the office). I am grateful to Mr. Gehry and the team at the office for their generosity and support over the years. All intellectual property rights of these projects continue to be owned by the office unless otherwise mentioned. The narrative texts on the projects are entirely personal, they do not represent the views or opinions of the office, its clients or any other third party or organization.