![]() ![]() Dokk1 features underground parking for 1,000 cars, a café, event spaces and private offices – not forgetting its 325,000 books. ![]() ![]() “You should think of it as a noisy living room for the whole city,” says library manager Knud Schulz of the multifaceted space (both in function and façade) with an area the size of five football pitches. “Everyone said it would be a catastrophe but it’s been our most successful urban initiative ever.” The harbourfront is unrecognisable from MONOCLE's last visit three years ago, with large, open public spaces and the DKR2.1bn (€280m) library known as Dokk1, which opened in June. “We’ve opened up the harbourfront and brought the water right through the city centre by opening up the Aarhus River,” explains Willacy, an Englishman who has lived in Denmark for 30 years. But now, at last, the city has reconnected with the water. In denial of its seaside location, for decades its bay was obscured by cranes, containers and warehouses. With an increasing number of mega-ships arriving in the city, the only way to expand (and compete with Hamburg, 340km away) was by relocating the whole shebang to the south of the city.Īarhus was always aquaphobic. Founded by the Vikings in the 800s, today it handles 66 per cent of Denmark’s container traffic and is a major hub for northern Europe. The city’s rebirth was kickstarted by the exigencies of its port. Along the way Aarhus will enjoy a stint as European Capital of Culture in 2017. These, though, are boom times for this city of 320,000, home to Denmark’s busiest container port, one of the country’s highest-ranking universities (45,000 students live here) and blue-chip companies such as wind-turbine firm Vestas, global clothing giant Bestseller and mega-dairy Arla.Īarhus 2030, a plan to create a more liveable city for the 60,000 people expected to move here over the next 15 years, hinges on tempting car-users out from the centre with a 110km, DKR2.4bn (€322m) light railway network investing DKR1.3bn (€174m) to improve Gellerup Park, Denmark’s largest “ghetto” (as referred to by the Danish government) and home to more than 80 different nationalities, including some highly publicised Islamist radicals and several new, mixed-income housing developments, most of them on brownfield sites. Now we have Moesgaard, the new botanic garden and, of course, there’s Dokk1.” More on that later.Īarhus has always been wealthy but it lacked the appeal and liveability of the capital and was usually thought of by Copenhageners as the chippy little brother “over there” on the Jutland peninsula. “The effect of Rainbow has been amazing, particularly for our international profile,” the Social Democratic mayor says, adding that the city’s name was changed from Århus to Aarhus for the same reason. When it opened in 2011, this DKR60m (€8m) enclosed circular walkway became the audacious new symbol of a city emerging from a rather dour post-industrial chrysalis. We are standing in Your Rainbow Panorama, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s multicoloured city halo perched atop Aros, the modern-art museum. Together with city architect Stephen Willacy he is overseeing a genuine paradigm shift in the liveability of Denmark’s second city. “Your brand needs to be credible, it needs to be rooted in the city.” He is looking out over the skyline through, literally, rose-tinted glass but this laidback 39-year-old is no deluded optimist. We tried that it was a disaster,” says mayor of Aarhus Jacob Bundsgaard. By Michael Booth Photography Jan Søndergaard ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |