The Nature Playground in Valbyparken
Valbyparken is the biggest park in Copenhagen. The old park from the 1960s was totally renovated and transformed into a modern park in 1994-2004. A one-kilometer avenue of Populus Nigra Italica was planted across the park as an iconic landmark, biodiversity meadows of wild flowers and mounds were laid out in connection with a new area with water holes for frogs and salamanders. In 1996, when Copenhagen was appointed European Culture City, 17 circular theme gardens were constructed and built as a unique collaboration between landscape architects, landscape gardeners, plant nurseries and companies that supplied building materials.
Back then Helle Nebelong was employed by the City of Copenhagen and very much involved in the developing of Valbyparken. She designed among others the overall masterplan for the 17 theme gardens and the now world-famous nature playground, that opened in 2001. The 20.000 square meter nature playground replaced an old dilapidated construction playground and was originally built as a construction project for the unemployed.
Since Valbyparken is an old landfill for Copenhageners’ household waste, the environmental authorities demanded that half a meter of soil was removed from the entire area and replaced with new, clean soil. The old rubbish dump soil was not allowed to be removed from Valbyparken and was therefore built into a row of mounds, which separate the playground from the rest of the pancake-flat park.
The Nature Playground quickly became Copenhagen’s most visited playground and the playground where people spend the longest time.
In 2022 when the playground was completely run down the City of Copenhagen asked Helle Nebelong to make the plan for the renovation of the playground in the spirit of her original plan but with an even greater focus on sustainable materials and universal design. Old wooden edges have been replaced with boulders, so that the durability is in principle eternal. Old historic granite bollards and a family of turtles made of boulders and red Swedish Öland-stones have been added to the project, as have a circular space surrounded by brushwood fences, which is continuously filled with branch clippings from Valbyparken.
The users were asked what they wanted for the new edition of the twenty-year-old nature playground. Much of the feedback was “Don’t change anything!” but the roleplay game people who visits the playground every fortnight and have done this for the last twenty years came up with good ideas that Helle integrated in the now renovated project. The Nature Playground re-opened in September 2023 after being closed for a year due to the pervasive construction works.
– My driving force is to create playgrounds where the children want to be, regardless of whether the children are toddlers, kindergarteners, schoolchildren or older children. A key to that is creating environments that are more like nature than classic playgrounds and by adding elements that challenge the fine and gross motor skills and stimulate the senses and the courage to challenge oneself and explore the surroundings, says Helle.
The whole plan is full of asymmetry, which encourages children to concentrate on how to manage their bodies around the landscape without falling and getting hurt. In that way, they learn to take care of themselves, and that gives them strength and confidence!
– A place where everything is not predetermined gives the children endless playing possibilities
and at the same time, they make their own marks. Of course, this means they move things around, but it never gets messy due to the tight confines of the paths, mounds and the circular wooden bridge. If you create some frameworks that are tight enough to allow the children to mess around within them, then you have created the perfect playground,” she points out.
The playground’s most important elements are:
The original woodland, the mounds and the wide stretch of meadow outside the playground.
Large areas with sand, gravel and stepping stones, small green islands, winding paths, small bridges, areas with wild flowers, the Mikado Mountain and the big Snail-shaped Mound with a path spiraling up it to a look-out point where everyone can come up and get the feeling of being ‘on the top’ or King of the top and experience a ‘magical stone’.
The entire playground is embraced by a circular 210-meter wooden bridge, which “floats” half a meter above the ground. The planks in the bridge were originally from the many elm trees, felled in Copenhagen due to Dutch elm disease in 2000-2001. The new bridge is barley made of American Juniper wood and the wooden product Kebony that is produced by FSC-certified Nordic Pine.
The five iconic towers, that was originally designed by four students from Denmark’s Design School in 2000 have also undergone a renewal with more sustainable materials without changing the original design. The towers are placed as precise points on the circular bridge. Each tower has its own theme: The light’s tower, The wind’s tower, The green tower, The bird tower and The tower of change.
Location: The Staffed Nature Playground, Hammelstrupvej 41, 2450 Copenhagen SV, Denmark
Building Owner: City of Copenhagen
Park area: 20.000 square meter
Design: Helle Nebelong, Landscape Architect MAA, MDL, MPM, Director
Towers designed by: Kirsten Due Kongsbach, Pernille Frank Dige, Pernille Bustrup and Fridrik Bjarnason
Contractor: Anlægsgartnerfirmaet Kirkegaard A/S
Woodworks: Frede Vest A/S
Inaugurated/Re-opened: September 2023
Design and photos: Helle Nebelong
The drawing is hand-colored by Timoteo Ebikon