|  With its booming aviation, IT and media industries, Hamburg’s stature as an international business hub grows daily. Its air- and seaports are spawning new terminals, while upmarket retail complexes and luxury hotels are sprouting. Even non-Beatles-related tourism is taking off; Hamburg is now officially ranked the 12th most popular European city.
Hamburg also boasts one of Europe’s biggest urban development projects. The assertively named HafenCity, a 155-hectare chunk of former docklands previously used by German Rail, the Army and Deutsche Post, is well on course to become home to around 12,000 new occupants, a workplace for more than 40,000 and, possibly, a cultural attraction for millions. Indeed, when the final necklace of Philippe Starck interior-designed apartments finally links the other architectural jewels brightening the waterfront, central Hamburg’s population will have doubled. Aiming to capitalise on what it calls its mixture of old-brick port ambience and high tech, only a kilometre from Hamburg’s central train station and less than 10 km from the airport, HafenCity aims to further bolster industry clusters such as the sustainable and innovative sectors, aviation (the Airbus 380 is being produced at nearby Finkenwerder), IT and the media. There are already 70,000 employees at 5,500 IT companies in Hamburg, and 63,000 in the media. HafenCity, which begins just on the other side of Speicherstadt, has already been earmarked for headquarters by Unilever, Spiegel and the world’s biggest shipping freight company, Kühne + Nagel.  Incoming companies are particularly enthusiastic about the new €5bn underground train, which will run from 2011. Affordable housing is a priority for HafenCity, according to communications director Susanne Bühler. “Hamburg’s city centre is already very thinly populated, and we don’t want to create dead spaces,” says Bühler, who adds with Germanic precision that “33% of sites will be apartments of all price ranges”.
In accordance with an emphatic mixed-use policy, corporate offices will nuzzle schools, university faculties, concert venues, a retail zone, a science centre, an aquarium and an ambitious maritime museum. HafenCity also looks set to house Europe’s most eye-popping signature building since Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum transformed Bilbao. The Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall will spume from the top of the red-brick warehouse Kaispeicher A, like the froth on an enormous glass of milch kaffee. Work on the block of gigantic glass waves, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, started in April, and this urban beacon will eventually house a concert hall, hotel, apartments and restaurants. While the Concert Hall might hog the headlines, Martin Murphy, partner at Hamburg-based architects Jan Störmer Partner, says: “I think 80% of HafenCity’s buildings will be of significant architectural interest. The quality and standards that are being guaranteed by the city and the investors are incredible. Planning has been very slow, methodical and intelligent, as in much of the Netherlands. It will be 15 or 20 years before we can call it a success, but everyone here has a right to be proud.” Murphy, whose firm designed the HafenCity buildings for Kühne + Nagel, adds: “Germany is more confident socially and economically these days, and buildings are the first barometer.” Hamburg particularly has a lot to be confident about. Although cities such as London, Rotterdam and San Francisco have successfully redeveloped their disused docks, the HafenCity project is unique because of its sheer size. “No other city in Europe is in a position to develop such a large new district right in its centre,” says Bühler. Moreover, as investors in HafenCity are acutely aware, Hamburg is the key centre for commercial export and logistics in Germany and the hub of the Baltic region and central Europe. Even more significantly, China is the Port of Hamburg’s biggest client and the city sees HafenCity as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to further expand its Far Eastern links. A China Centre Europe is being planned, with residential and commercial properties close to the River Elbe as well as training and cultural facilities and Chinese shops and restaurants. The city is even building up a national centre for traditional Chinese medicine – a literal transfusion of the very old to the very new. |