BDP Manchester delivers plans for Sweden's Gothenburg district

Architecture firm BDP’s Manchester studio has delivered a master-plan for a new City District for Gothenburg in Sweden, which is to be twice the size of the studio’s Liverpool 1.

The 38ha Backaplan site is a large area of redundant dockland, and the private-public consortium behind its regeneration chose BDP after visiting the 18ha Liverpool shopping centre.

The Gothenburg group comprising the city authorities and private developers led by the Coop development group were particularly impressed with the pedestrian-first ‘open streets’ design employed in Liverpool.

BDP’s scheme employs the same philosophy to the public realm for Backaplan and goes before the Gothenburg city politicians for approval this autumn; if approved it is hoped development work will begin on site in 2016.

BDP’s proposals mixed use scheme including 100,000sq m of retail space designed to integrate with the strong independent retail offer, and almost 100,000 sq m of office space in phases. In addition, 6,000 apartments to house 15,000 people have been designed to encourage public transport use and car-free housing areas.

To support this, BDP have used a ‘community barn’ model which acts as the community hub for the four individually-designed neighbourhoods, providing retail, healthcare and other facilities, with a multi-storey car park and rooftop leisure facilities above.

Francis Glare, BDP’s urbanism director says: “BDP’s holistic multi-disciplinary philosophy is well suited to working in Sweden, which is often is the first country associated with intelligent, high quality design.

“All at BDP Manchester are delighted to be working with the public and private team in Gothenburg, which along with retail and mixed-use schemes in Stuhr and Malmo, is one of three projects BDP is leading in Sweden

“Our master-plan has translated the client group vision into exciting and viable plans which can be delivered by the city and its private sector partners, and we look forward to continued involvement in the design and development process.”

Bjarne Fjellanger, head of Property Development, of Coop, says: “We are very delighted with the work BDP have done together with us, landowners and the city officials.

“BDP have executed their work very well, they have listened to us, the Clients, and done their best to understand the local demands in Gothenburg and our market. We can therefore only give our best recommendations for BDP as a Master planning team.”

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