ADEPT Architects and Schønherr Landscape Win H+ Planning Competition

The municipality of Helsingborg, Sweden, chose Schønherr Landscape and ADEPT Architects (both from Denmark) as winners of the planning competition of the 100Ha site of H+ in Helsingborg.

The competition was invited and included: White architects AB (Sweden), KCAP Architects & planers (the Netherlands), Space Group (Norway) and Foster + Partners (UK).

The motivation of the jury was clear: “The Tolerant City of all the entries offers the most extensive and balanced range of solutions to the challenges posted by the competition. With its strong blue green connection, the structure plan is very convincing and full of development potential. The authors have understood and worked with the specific needs of Helsingborg. The proposal also shows how cultural, provisional, entrepreneurial and sustainable initiatives can be integrated with the area’s physical environment.”

“Our vision is to let The Tolerant City grow in the H+ area through a flexible and instructive planning process. The point of departure is Helsingborg’s unique characteristics, the landscape, the water, history and the current well-run activities. The inherent wishes for proximity to water, sustainability in both the social and the physical sense of the word, meeting places and diversity have been staple requirements in the preparation of this project. The structure plan is prepared with time as the fourth dimension, with the intention of examining how The Tolerant City might be able to grow, fully formed and yet constantly pointing towards its own continuation – up-dating and transforming– peaceably, but not vapidly. The structure plan has faith in a fixed link between Helsingborg and Elsinore, but does not treat this as a prerequisite.”

“The structure plan is a framework with exact objectives and guidelines that may be developed and gain tangible form in a number of ways. This simultaneity of firmness and flexibility is developed strategically in relation to a series of factors that collectively turn the project into a robust planning tool. A dynamic and adaptable planning process is to a large extent “sustainability”. Not only the physical organization of the area, but also its ambiance, its cultural and functional content, have been dealt with in order to create The Tolerant City. The different districts open themselves to a great variety of people and a future life as yet unknown, while they interweave with the rest of Helsingborg, psychologically as well as physically.”

City squares and recreational areas facilitate the coexistence of a wide variety of people, regardless of age, ethnicity and gender, and inspire and challenge individual perspectives, lifestyles and values. Architectural diversity and exuberance fuse the smallest with the largest and create excitement and tension with regard to scale and expression. Nothing disappears or is generated from nothing in The Tolerant City; visibility and learning create awareness of the city’s cycles and processes. The city is used and created simultaneously; it is never consumed or expended.”

Martin Krogh from Adept says: “The motor mechanics, the skaters, the designers and the clandestine lovers also belong in The Tolerant City, where low rent, little workshops, commerce without invoices, and experimental reuse of buildings create growth areas and nonconformist milieus.”

Martin Laursen from Adept adds: “In The Tolerant City, people are more than inhabitants and citizens – the citizens perceive themselves as parts of a greater entity, and appreciate that citizenship both obliges and entitles. Living, public city space, where joint movement and transport are easy, transforms the flows and thoroughfares of the city into rendezvous for the inhabitants.”

Torben Schønherr says: ”In this city, there are jobs for the innovative trades and industries, with sea view, berths for private boats, and fast connections to both digital and physical infrastructures.”

The complete team includes: Transsolar Klima Engineering, VIA Trafik, General Public Agency, bbn consult, FB Engineering and Professor, urban planner Jens Kvorning, Schønherr Landscape and Adept.

Images: Schønherr Landscape / ADEPT Architects