RECENTLY COMPLETED VISITOR POINTS RE-FRAMES LARGEST LANDSCAPE PARK IN COPENHAGEN
Just a short ride from Copenhagen City Hall Square, Amager Nature Park, a 35 km2 landscape park offersprotected nature, open spaces, and anunhindered stretch of coastline. Completed over the past year, ADEPT and LYTT Architecture have re-thought the park’s identity, including the completion of a series of visitor points that stages the overall experience of landscape, water, and biodiversity.
Concentrated in a series of easily accessible visitor points, a new design strategy makes Amager Nature Park - from the plains in the north to the south coast of Amager –more appealing to its users. With nature as it’s central focal point, the unique landscape habitatis reactivated through a homogeneous architectural vocabulary emphasizing the park's qualities, outdoor life, and social activities.
The design enhances the park’s DNA in a clear landscape narrative and an easily recognizable yet subtle architectural language. The project elements draw uponexisting landscape qualities by adding a layer of experiencesin a new framework for more diverse and inviting nature activities. One of the main design goals is to ensure that experience and protection supplement each other, so that the untouched nature remains intact when existing and new users engage themselves in the visitor experience.
The completed visitor points are strategically located throughout the park to highlight the park's unique character, and to underlinecertainelements, views, or programs of the individual location by facilitating the meeting between man and nature, built and grown, building and landscape.
The visitor points consist of both built volume and landscape elements. Each destination is tailored to its specific location, and each design emphasizes natural focal points and functions in the park with minimal interference of the protected landscape. All destinations are placed in a transition zone from city to nature or from land to water to frame the contrast between the landscape and the surrounding city. Each visitor point creates unique opportunities for recreation, nature experiences, play and learning by breaking down the large scale of the landscape into human scale activities and narratives.
The individual building designs are founded in the same architectural vocabulary with visible wooden structures, distinctive roof shapes and dark-burnt shingles that clearly mark a place in the landscape without disturbing the experience of it. The buildings and visitor points are complemented by a system of 'tracks' or boardwalks that highlight routesin the landscape with a focus on accessibility and wayfinding in the park.
Quotes:
"Because the scale is so huge, the nature park can be overwhelming for those unfamiliar with nature, so to make the area more accessible, we have developed the visitor points to be a destination in themselves, but also to guide visitors to the next landmark. In this way, visitors should venture further out into the nature park and become familiar with the great natural qualities of the area"
"The visitor pointsemphasize qualities in the park that are already there and do so with a minimal interference with the protected landscape. It has been crucial to us, that the architecture is carefully integrated into nature - not only that the new buildings blend naturally into the landscape, but that the development takes place on the terms of the protected nature".
Team:
Lead consultant / landscape architect: LYTT Architecture
Building architect: ADEPT
Client: Municipalities of Copenhagen, Taarnby and Dragoer;the Danish Nature Agency, By & Havn
Collaborators: SYSTRA Danmark, BARK Raadgivning, JAC Studios
Photographer: Morten Aagaard Krogh
Funding: The project is supported by Nordea-fonden, Friluftsrådets udlodningsmidler for friluftsliv and Lokale- og Anlægsfonden
