New in Copenhagen: The Opera Park

What began in 2019 as a competition win was realized in 2023. Opera Park in Copenhagen opened at the end of September 2023. The park was designed by none other than the Danish architecture and landscape architecture firm Cobe. And as you would expect from the city and the planning office, this is no ordinary green space. Find out more here.

Opera Park is located on a former industrial island in Copenhagen’s inner harbor. More precisely, between the Royal Danish Opera House and the soon-to-be-completed Paper Island. The area lay fallow as a modest green field for almost twenty years. This is astonishing considering the intense construction activity that usually prevails in Copenhagen. It is even more astonishing that in this prominent location, instead of the planned residential area, an open space now adorns the historic city center. The A.P. Møller Foundation donated the park as a public recreational space in Copenhagen. And it is not small: at 21,500 square meters, it is the size of three soccer pitches.

With Opera Park, the Danish architecture firm has created a lush park island with gardens including a café, greenhouse and underground parking garage. The organic design language of winding paths and rounded flowerbeds allows the components of Opera Park to merge together. The six gardens represent different parts of the world: the North American forest, the Danish oak forest, the Nordic forest, the Oriental garden and the English garden. There is also a subtropical garden in the greenhouse. Many little surprises await here, such as a fountain and a water lily pond. This variety of plant species and landscape structures is not just a feast for us humans. Here, the animal world also finds a rich environment for food, protection and habitat.

Dan Stubbergaard, founder of Cobe and professor at Harvard, describes the project as follows: “Opera Park is a place where nature comes first in the midst of Copenhagen’s busy urban development. With its six gardens, winding paths and carefully designed viewpoints, the project draws on elements of Copenhagen’s historic, romantic gardens to address today’s challenges such as biodiversity loss and water management. The park is designed for recreation, relaxation and contemplation and provides the city with a much-needed green oasis. Walking through the park, you feel like you have left the city and are immersed in nature, almost forgetting that you are in the middle of the dense city center.”

The Opera Park is open all year round. The exotic and native plants are intended to offer visitors a lively and constantly changing backdrop. Depending on the season, it will therefore look different here. In spring, a richly blooming color palette shines here. Summer brings different shades of green, which turn red and yellow in the fall. In winter, the evergreen pines and frozen water surfaces dominate.

At the heart of Opera Park is the 680 square meter greenhouse and café. The building is also organically shaped as a glass structure with a floating roof. It serves to make the park a popular excursion destination all year round. The underground parking garage is accessed via the café in the form of a terrace. There is space for 300 vehicles here. The subtropical garden in the greenhouse also steps down to connect the different levels.

“Opera Park is the stage for a nature experience in the heart of Copenhagen. Like an opera stage, the park is a composed landscape with a foreground, a middle ground and a background. The 80,000 plants and over 600 trees are placed in such a way that they form a natural backdrop with a view of the harbor. The terrain and trees are highest where they form the background and lowest in the foreground towards the harbor,” explains Dan Stubbergaard.

There is also a weather-protected connection between the park and the Royal Danish Opera. The covered walkway runs under a light glass construction with a floating roof. The curved, romantic design language can also be found here. The connecting walkway forms one of three bridges that link the harbor island with the city center.

Rainwater is a valuable resource for the Opera Park. The water is fed from the roof of the Royal Danish Opera into underground reservoirs. This allows it to be used for watering the greenhouse. The Opera Park is also largely unsealed. What the permeable gravel surfaces cannot store seeps away into the lush green areas. In addition, solar cells on the roof of the opera house supply the underground parking garage, the park and the greenhouse with electricity. The materials chosen for Opera Park are robust and fully recyclable. And anyone who thinks that the arrangement and modeling of the planting areas is only for aesthetic reasons is mistaken. On the one hand, it protects visitors from strong winds from the sea. Secondly, it reduces flooding in the event of heavy rainfall or a sharp rise in the water level in the harbor.

Also by Cobe and also in Copenhagen: at Karen Blixens Plads, Cobe created a landscape of hills and valleys – and parking facilities for 2,000 bicycles.