Hamburg seeks modern face with waterfront icon

HAMBURG, May 5: Towering cranes and huge mounds of earth flank gleaming new glass-and-brick apartment complexes just a short walk from the historic centre of this booming northern German port city.

Rising on Hamburg's waterfront is the biggest development project of its kind in Europe -- a carefully managed experiment in modern living that officials hope will help turn their city into a cultural magnet.

The 330 million dollars centrepiece of the new ''HafenCity'' will be a distinctive concert hall of wavy glass that could do for Hamburg what Jorn Utzon's white shell-like opera house has done for Sydney.

From atop a massive triangular port storage building from the 1960s, the iconic Elbe Philharmonic will dominate the western tip of a development of 12,000 designer apartments, new offices, shops, cultural facilities and even a university campus in a 155-hectare (380 acre) site on the abandoned old harbour.

''It will be a symbol of Hamburg for the 21st century,'' Karin von Welck, a member of the city government in charge of culture, told Reuters. ''Even before its completion it is helping to put Hamburg on the international map.'' Work on the futuristic 110-metre tall hall, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog&de Meuron who produced London's Tate Modern, began in April and is due to finish in 2010.

THRIVING PORT

Hamburg may lack the rich historical lures of its eastern rival Berlin and the swagger of affluent Munich in the south, but this city of 1.7 million on the River Elbe captures Germany's recent economic and cultural revival like no other.

First settled in the 8th century, Hamburg later emerged as the most important North Sea port of the Hanseatic League of medieval cities as grains, cloth, furs, herring, spices, timber and metal passed through its harbour.

International trade remains its lifeblood. Hamburg has the second-biggest port in Europe after Rotterdam, handling 134 million tonnes of goods in 2006, and is the biggest destination on the continent for wares coming from China.

As Germany emerged last year from years of stagnation to post its best growth since 2000, Hamburg and its booming export-driven economy helped lead the way.

The Hamburg-based HWWI economic institute forecast last month that the city's economy would grow 3.7 percent this year and 4.2 percent in 2008, against 2.3 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively, for Germany as a whole.

Thanks to its trading prowess Hamburg boasts over 90 consulates, second worldwide to New York. It also counts over 2,300 bridges -- more than Venice and Amsterdam combined.

Ask anyone outside of Germany, however, what makes Hamburg special and you may get a shrug.

''Hamburg's iconography is relatively weak. It is not closely linked to any particular building or image, like New York is to its skyline or Berlin to the Brandenburg Gate,'' said Juergen Bruns-Berentelg, the municipal planner in charge of HafenCity.

''The city has a positive image, but it has not necessarily been seen as innovative or dynamic.'' HafenCity, due to be completed in 2020, is meant to change all that. Because Hamburg owns much of the land on which the ''city within a city'' is being built, it has financed its share of the project through lot sales. Private investors are funding the rest, but are subject to a careful vetting process.

City officials are intent on avoiding the pitfalls of other harbour rehabilitation projects like Docklands in London or South Street Seaport in New York, which Bruns-Berentelg dismisses as gaudy tourist-oriented caricature.

SOME CRITICS

''We are a little more ambitious,'' says the energetic 55-year old, who led the reconstruction of Berlin's Potzdamer Platz in the 1990s. ''Our challenge is to preserve the location's historic identity and create something new at the same time.''

As a result many of the buildings in HafenCity will have brick facades to blend in with the 19th-century ''Speicherstadt'' warehouse complex that abuts the development. To ensure the development is cutting-edge and diverse, the design of each building is open to a competition. Dutchman Rem Koolhaas, who will design a futuristic science centre, is one of several top foreign architects who are already involved.

Bruns-Berentelg likes to talk of high-quality public spaces, where residents, workers and tourists intermingle seamlessly in a modern urban environment.

There will be no shopping malls in HafenCity. Instead, all buildings -- whether they house offices or residential space -- will have a 5-metre high ground floor to lure retailers and restaurants, creating an outdoor street culture. Cars will be parked underground, waterfront footpaths will abound.

Planners have even hired a ''social integration coordinator'' to ensure residents are aware of all the facilities on offer.

HafenCity is not without its critics. Last month former Hamburg mayor Henning Vorscherau, who launched the project a decade ago, lashed out at the glass-heavy designs of the dozen-or-so buildings that have already sprung up.

''The risk is that three decades from now a new generation will shake their heads and refuse to live or work there,'' he told the local Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.

Michael Naumann, the designated challenger to conservative mayor Ole von Beust in 2008 elections, has likened the city's decision to build the Elbe Philharmonic to the purchase of a Rolls Royce by someone who can only afford a Fiat.

But listening to Hartmut Wegener, who is overseeing the construction of the hall, it is hard not to get swept up by the sheer scope of the project.

Wegener tells how the hall's special curved glass panels, designed to replicate the surrounding water's ripples, will pass through five different factories across Europe as they are produced, pressed and bent into shape.

''This is no ordinary building,'' he told Reuters. ''It will glimmer, gleam, move and reflect the water as if it were alive.

It fits perfectly into the Hamburg harbour and that's what is so exciting about it.''

REUTERS
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