Putting sustainability at the heart of placemaking

Deutzer Hafen will be a new city district in a former industrial harbour area, built around a vision for sustainable and resilient 21^st century city living.

A short distance across the River Rhine from the historic centre of Cologne, the ambitious regeneration scheme will transform the former docklands landscape into a vibrant place to live and work.

Soil remediation work following the Second World War bombing of diesel storage facilities on the site, together with concerns around the potential for flooding of the riverside location, left the district undeveloped for generations, and filled with redundant industrial and low value brownfield uses such as scrapyards.

But now the city has an ambition to develop the 240,000m² plot into a vibrant mixed-use area, providing new homes for 5,000 people and workplaces for another 4,500. Deutzer Hafen will be the City of Cologne’s flagship project paving the way towards a climate neutral and post-oil city.

Working with architects Cobe, moderne stadt – the public sector development wing of the City of Cologne – has developed a masterplan, which will transform the district over the next 25 years, along similar lines to the Hafencity in Hamburg. Buro Happold has been engaged as lead consultant, advising on sustainability, process integration and district certification.

Deutzer Hafen’s regeneration is designed around a series of public spaces with historical traces, envisioned to create a vibrant sense of place, including an infinity harbour swimming pool, heated using waste heat from the neighbourhood.

Sustainability Handbook

Our experts produced a Sustainability Handbook to communicate the sustainability ambitions of the scheme to all stakeholders. The handbook outlines a sustainability strategy built around five guiding principles – climate change, living quality, mobility change, energy transition and resource efficiency. The development will be shaped by the 15 United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) that impact urban development.

Flood risk may have been one of the initial concerns, given the riverside location. But our team has carefully analysed the data, and even taking global warming into account, has been able to demonstrate that significant flooding at the Deutzer Hafen site would be a once in a 100-year event. Nevertheless, flood resilience has been carefully factored into the design scheme for the project – with areas most at risk being given over to bicycle storage and parkland.

Streetscapes will be shaped to mitigate and contain the flow of water. A wetland park will also be incorporated to act as a natural rainwater filter. These public areas act to absorb excess rainwater and to provide diverse and green spaces for the public.

After the rainwater is filtered, it ends up in the new harbour pool. The rainwater runs from the pool into the harbour, creating a waterfall – which itself will become a visual focus for the development.

Award winning

The project will see the sustainable development of the 60-hectare site over the next 25 years, but even in its planning phase, it is already winning awards – including a platinum pre-certificate from DGNB, the German Sustainable Building Council.

Cities Director and Head of Sustainability for Europe Thomas Kraubitz, says the team aimed to build on an excellent masterplan developed by Cobe.

“We said let’s make sure this lives on so that in 25 years when the district is complete, we do have something that is different in a positive way. We are also looking at what climate change is bringing – we need to plan for that, including incorporating flood risk mitigation, as well as focusing on everything from microclimate, to species biodiversity and sustainable transport and carbon-free energy.”

Thomas Kraubitz, Cities Director and Head of Sustainability for Europe, Buro Happold