Karen Blixens Plads
Client:
Danish Building and Property Agency and The A.P. Moller Foundation
Size:
21,500 m2
Program:
Urban plaza at the University of Copenhagen
Collaborators:
EKJ, CN3, Vind-Vind, M.J. Eriksson, NCC
Awards:
EU Mies van der Rohe Award 2022 Nominee, Rethinking The Future Awards 2021, AZ Awards 2021 – Best Landscape Architecture, Dezeen Awards 2020 – Landscape Project of the Year, Årets Arne Award 2020 Finalist, DETAIL Readers' Prize 2020 Nominee, Building Awards 2020 – The Climate Prize
Karen Blixens Plads is an urban space at the University of Copenhagen. It is one of the biggest public squares in Copenhagen and is located between the South Campus and the nature reserve Amager Commons, an area of wetlands, fields and lakes. The urban space is connected to the commons through a gradual transition, which makes Karen Blixens Plads a hybrid of park and public square, organized as a superimposed surface of human-made hills and valleys with room for 2,000 parked bicycles inside the hills.
The square works as a campus landscape with an important functional role as well as a recreational resource. The necessary infrastructure is turned into a three-dimensional student hang-out.
For a long time, the university square was a dull grey parking area for bikes, in an unfriendly scale and with no spatial hierarchy. Although it was one of the biggest public spaces in the city, it was also one that few people used.
The new university square is arranged as a superimposed surface of hills and valleys with room for 2,000 parked bicycles. The heart of the campus nestles among the hills and valleys, providing a central urban living room that connects the three main entrances of the university.
The university square with its adjacent greenery and bicycle hills has a floating surface, evoking the impression of an undulating urban carpet. The bicycle hills are integrated into this floating carpet, providing covered bicycle parking underneath.
Bicycle parking under the hills.
The connection to the neigboring Amager Commons is created as a gradual transition from the urban university square to the greenery that naturally merges the green and urban spaces and materials. This creates a fine balance between the urban character of the university campus and the open natural space of Amager Commons.
The project includes three types of bicycle parking – uncovered, covered and slightly sunken into the terrain – and creates a landscape of hills that people can walk on top of or sit among in addition to using the bicycle parking. The almost cathedral-like form of the bicycle hills further offers an aesthetic experience in its own right, both when people park their bikes and when they use the hills for lectures, group work, concerts or Friday afternoon socializing.