Hamburg is a major port city and the second largest city in Germany. Hamburg’s Hanseatic legacy resulted in flourishing trade and economic prosperity, thus causing a massive population boom. During WWII, 80% of the port’s facilities were destroyed, but reconstruction quickly followed. Now, the city is working on the HafenCity project, to be finished in 2025 as a densely-settled urban environment, combining work, living, culture, and leisure. Similar sustainable projects are occurring on Hamburg’s Inselpark with experiments of Smart Price and Smart Material homes. Hamburg is also taking its history and redesigning it to fit the future. An old toxic landfill has become a site to harness renewable energy, and an old WWII air raid bunker has been converted into a renewable energy power plant. Hamburg relies on the harbor, sustainable experiments, and renewable energies to stay relevant and compete with other global powers.
As a port city, Hamburg understands that its policy must emphasize beautifying the port. Historically, well-made and well-designed port cities tend to attract more trade, boosting the city’s economy. The City of Hamburg made this a goal at any cost, even when the Elbphilharmonie (see below) Concert Hall ended up costing about 10x over its estimated cost. This building and other liveliness in the port area are invested in by the local government and create places with a great deal of social capital and boost the overall economic fortunes of the city. Since Hamburg is a major industrial center, it has to deal with issues of environmental impact head-on. Through the city’s Municipal Climate Protection Act, Hamburg has set goals even more ambitious than the E.U. in addressing carbon emissions, which is crucial to how the city, including private industry, develop in the next several decades. In addition, as Hamburg continues to take on the huge HafenCity redevelopment project, the city is putting protections in place to ensure the project is truly “mixed use” and that it does not turn into a “rich retiree scenario.” Without a local government putting policies in place to stop this from happening, HafenCity could become a socially and financially exclusive area that fails to benefit most people in Hamburg.
HafenCity is a large redevelopment project located in Hamburg where planners are aiming to develop a new waterfront downtown center for the city. While most downtown centers contain office space and shops, HafenCity will combine the workplace, residential units, leisure, and tourist amenities together in a vibrant mixed use district that highlights Hamburg’s identity as a port city. While many downtown areas are only lively during work hours, this type of mixed use development brings life to the new downtown district during all times of the week. Because many of the former buildings were single story, there is a lot of new development within HafenCity, allowing architects and urban planners to develop the district with larger buildings that use the space more efficiently, which provide a mix of uses that give the area an urban feel. Hamburg has been forward thinking with the development of these new buildings by integrating sustainable and innovative building practices.
HafenCity’s redevelopment project’s crown jewel is the Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall, which is located at the entrance of the Port of Hamburg. The Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall was finished in 2017 and is intended to be an iconic building for Hamburg like the Opera House is for Sydney, Australia. This monumental building is tailored with a glass paneled facade that captures the sun’s rays and the color of the surrounding water. These features make the concert hall dazzle setting it apart from the rest in HafenCity. This monumental project establishes greater imageability for Hamburg. The concert hall is a memorable landmark that elevates the status of the city and portrays the culture and success of Hamburg. Iconic buildings evoke pride in their citizens, and they attract outside attention from tourists wanting to come see the sites for themselves. The Elbphilharmonie provides benefits to Hamburg that reach beyond it solely being a concert hall. This large investment in a single building has started to impact the entire area around the site. The surrounding district has become a nicer area, and centers and spaces in the vicinity have been outfitted to a higher quality to keep up with the projected standard coming from this iconic building.
Inselpark
Inselpark, a green park filled with sport and leisure for the HafenCity project, is surrounded by innovative, smart technologies, especially those found in smart material homes. Smart materials are unconventional building materials, systems, and products that interact and adapt dynamically to the environment around them. As of 2013, four of eight smart material concepts have been completed including BIQ, Smart is Green, Soft House, and WOODCUBE; each concept utilizes a creative approach to managing energy within the home.
The Smart is Green concept home has a triple layer façade system comprised of a vertical garden, insulating glaze, and phase change material (PCM) shell. The vertical garden shields heat and absorbs carbon, while the PCM absorbs or releases heat depending on the temperature of the environment. Photovoltaic cells and solar arrays are used to capture sunlight and convert it into thermal energy or heat, respectively. Not only do these technologies supply the home, but excess energy and heat are fed into the nearby energy grids and heating networks providing renewable sources of energy and heating for other areas.
The BIQ concept is the first of its kind featuring an algae façade. The ‘bio skin’ is a collection of glass tanks where algae photosynthesize with the help of sunlight and liquid nutrients. This system has the ability to generate solar thermal energy, produce biomass and biogas energy from harvested algae, and even produce geothermal heat from specialized heat exchangers.
The Soft House concept uses moveable photovoltaic cells to track the sun’s motion throughout the day to maximize the amount of captured sunlight. This home also comes with moveable walls which are imbedded with direct heating from the solar panels and lights to customize their living layout.
The WOODCUBE design is constructed entirely out of wood and aims to be 100% carbon neutral down to its power and heating sources. This concept demonstrates the potential to build a carbon neutral home with 100% bio-recyclable materials is in reach and should be looked to for future housing inspiration.
The smart material homes surrounding Inselpark show Hamburg’s transition towards innovative, creative thinking to solve our world’s rising energy problem. These intelligent technologies are revitalizing the appearance of Hamburg and pushing the limits of renewable technology and sustainable architecture.
Energieberg Georgswerder
Once a toxic waste dump, the Georgswerder Energy Hill has been retrofitted with wind turbines, solar panels, and a groundwater treatment plant to provide 4000 households with electricity and clean water. The cogeneration plant is completely sustainable, running the entire information center on renewable energy. Transforming this once brownfield into an energy generating, tourist attraction is a smart use of land, creative thinking, and opportunity. In the future, the Energy Hill can be further retrofitted with energy storage areas to stabilize the energy grid during spikes and drops in energy demand and supply. One of the largest problems with the energy grid today in creating storage; using this unusable hill for storage would be an excellent use of space.
Energiebunker
The Energiebunker, a former air raid bunker, has been transformed into a renewable power plant, fitted with solar thermal units on its roof, solar panels on its south side, and a massive heat reservoir inside. The real hallmark of the bunker is its heat reservoir which stores heat from the solar thermal units, a combined heat and power unit, a wood combustion unit, and waste heat from a nearby power plant. One of the greatest problems with managing energy grids is controlling the flux in supply and demand throughout the day. This revolutionary heat reservoir provides a buffer during these fluctuations by converting the heat into power in periods of high demand and maintaining a steady supply otherwise. Upon its completion, the Energiebunker should be able to heat 3000 homes, power 1000 homes, and supply renewable energy to the electric grid. Future directions for the bunker are to take in excess wind, solar, and geothermal power from other areas and store them in the heat reservoir. With this method, excess power isn’t being wasted, but waiting to be used.
Toxic Waste
Landfills, especially toxic waste landfills, pose a lot of threat to public health. An increase in self-reported health outcomes and symptoms such as headaches, sleepiness, respiratory symptoms, psychological conditions, and gastrointestinal problems have been found consistently in health surveys around sites where local concerns were evident - symptoms could be a direct toxicologic action of chemicals, an effect of stress and fears related to waste site, or effect of social factors related to environmental injustice.Chemical exposures also disproportionately affect pregnant women and young children - a number of studies suggest a relationship between landfill sites and adverse pregnancy outcomes. The most consistent finding of poor health associations with landfill sites is an increase in infants with low birth rates; other findings reveal potentials for risk of birth defects affecting the central nervous system, musculoskeletal system and cardiac defects. Additionally, in 1983 when the landfill was closed and plans were made to convert it into a public park, the chemical dioxin was found leaching to the surface on different parts of the site. Dioxin, the chemical found in agent orange, has long-term exposure associations with impairment of the immune system, developing nervous system, endocrine system, and reproductive functions. Now, it serves as a source of clean energy to homes which help decrease air pollution from unsustainable forms of energy production, and as of 2013 it became a park open to the public and home of an information center - inspiring people to come and learn about the history behind the green space and inspire similar change elsewhere.
Clean Energy
The Energiebunker is another example of redeveloping wasted space into clean energy production, inspiring the hold housing block to be refurbished and the first 750 flats to receive energy from the energy bunker. Now they can generate heat energy for about 3000 households and electricity for 1000 households, all of which is helping the health of our environment by not depleting its limited resources and using clean technologies that do not contribute to air pollution or climate change.
Sports and Physical Activity
When it comes to redevelopment, though, no project is greater than then HafenCity. The area will be filled with completely new infrastructure for shopping, medicine, homes for the elderly, and the new Inselpark will be right next door. As an area originally dedicated to potentially hosting the Olympic games, it will still be dedicated to sports and recreation. The Nordwandhale climbing wall is aimed for all ages, from five year olds to the elderly, as well as the multitude of other sporting venues inspires more physical activity other than activity just from daily travel. Stretches of open green space with promenades and water flowing through, as well as the forest exhibition, give people the natural getaway that is so beneficial to mental health as a source of psychological restoration and stress management.
Art and Music
Finally, the city of Hamburg places a lot of importance on the arts. This can be seen with the grand gesture of the Elphilharmonie orchestra hall, as well as the old air raid bunker transformed into art and music studios and stores. Music engagement and visual arts has been shown to decrease anxiety and help people express themselves. This can be extremely critical especially in urban cities with large amounts of immigration and diversity as a way for people to connect with each other.