EMBT – Marco Polo Terraces
Amplasament / Location: HafenCity, Hamburg, Germania / Germany Construcţie / Construction: 2004 Client / Client: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH Arhitecţi / Architects: Benedetta Tagliabue, Miralles Tagliabue Director de proiect / Project director: Karl Unglaub Arhitecţi locali / Local Architects: WES & Partner Landschaftsarchitekten Wehberg, Schatz, Betz, Kaschke Hamburg Ingineri / Engineers: Körting Ingenieure, Hamburg (Ingenieurbau Uferwände, Stützwände), WTM Ingenieure, Hamburg (Lichtspirale) Fotografii / Photographs: Andreea-Livia Ivanovici
The large terraces slowly descend towards the calm, yet slightly shivering water of the river Elbe, onto the edge of the docks. Buildings are now wrapped around the former industrial docks, from office buildings to apartment blocks and the new city Philharmonics designed by Herzog & de Meuron. The former industrial port of Hamburg is now undergoing a massive and complex process of reconversion. A fascinating labyrinth is thus being reintegrated in the life of the city. The rectangular fabric of canals and streets still has something from the industrial iciness of the space, but the divers and playful architecture of the buildings and of the public spaces sweetens the atmosphere At the end of one canal, the Marco Polo Terraces open the view upon this newly built horizon of the city and generate a public space able to respond to an interesting pairing of functions: recreation space and view point platform. Although it stands upon a mineral beach, the nature of the space is strongly influenced by the natural elements (the free pattern trees, the terraces and small hills covered in grass), which are interposed in order to create a place in which people can loosen the tension of the city in a calm atmosphere, protected from the street bustle; a rich urban space at human scale. Wide wooden platform stand just a little higher than the grass of the terraces and are especially designed in order to allow their unrestricted use, no matter if you feel the need to sit like on a bench and chat or maybe just lay down and enjoy the sun’s warmth. The terrain is stepped towards the water and each level is mainly occupied by these «benches» and by the trees which filter the light and create shade. Even if this is a reconstructed nature, it is a place which looks upon the fluidity and freedom of the natural landscape.
The architecture created by EMBT generates a ludic space, composed by the rhythm created from the mineral and natural spaces which intersect and come together in places for relaxation, thus composing an amphitheater which opens and slides toward the calm of the water and towards new possible horizons.
Translation: Andreea-Livia Ivanovici
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