Daniaparken, Malmö
Case study
Daniaparken, Malmö
Project data
Project name: Daniaparken
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Client: City of Malmö
Designer: Thorbjörn Andersson and Pe Ge Hillinge/ FFNS Architects
Project team: Veronika Borg, Peter Ekroth, Clotte Frank, Sven Hedlund,
Kenneth Hildén, Anders Lidström, Michael Hallbert (illumination)
Area: 20,000m
Date completed: 2001
Overview
Daniaparken is part of a new urban district in Malmö, a city of over 260,000 inhabitants, located in the
southernmost part of Sweden. When complete, the new district will contain about 600 dwellings, shops,
restaurants, offices, school and day care centres, parts of a new university campus, streets and parks.
The site is a landfill, with contaminated mud as a result of about a century of industrial activity. It is all flat.
Existing qualities of the site were the sea, the wind, the sky and the long views to the free horizon. The
immense scale of the waterfront landscape is reflected in the park, which also has a large scale. The open-
ness is intended to contrast with the density of the city development of the district.
The park will, to a great extent, provide space for social activities. Different elements and places provide
space for different activities and numbers of people. The Scouts area, for example, can accommodate about
10–15 people, while the large multi-use lawn can take several thousands.
In Sweden, most of the large city parks were completed around the turn of the last century. Malmö has
the reputation of being ‘the city of parks’ in Sweden. In spite of this, no parks of the size and cost of
Daniaparken have been designed and constructed for half a century, either in Malmö or in Sweden as a
whole. In this respect, the effort by the city of Malmö is remarkable and admirable.
The design of the park is the result of a competition, which was initiated by the European exposition Bo
- The design process took off in a competitive atmosphere between several well-known landscape archi-
tects and offices from Scandinavian countries. The location and site are exceptional in many ways and the
design was intended to be exceptional too, in having an international outlook and in being at the forefront
of contemporary landscape architecture in Sweden. Even though the concept of the design seems to be
typical of waterfront parks all over Europe, it maintains Scandinavian traditions in detailing and materials,
using mainly granite, gravel and tarred wood in the characteristic elements of the park. Details are both
traditional and innovative in design.