he park combines a unique stairway providing access to Malmö’s historic canal, a pocket of green space for the residents of the surrounding neighbourhood and triangular seating made from sustainable Kebony wood, thus avoiding use of tropical hardwood.

Bordered by the existing buildings, the triangular park is divided into two parts featuring circular vegetation beds adorned with shrubs and plants on one side, and an active urban square on the other. The park vaunts an art installation by a Swedish Artist who lives in Malmö, David Svensson. Much of David’s artwork draws inspiration from maritime history and aesthetics, a factor that was of particular relevance to this site adjacent to the canal. The installation was unveiled at the park’s opening last year by Ola Melin, Director of Urban planning division in Malmö, and has proved a great success with the local community in the past 12 months.

This urban park can be found on a site that was previously occupied by an abandoned bus interchange. With significant landscaping improvements, the area – described by the City of Malmö’s preservation unit as having significant and historic value – has again become a positive feature for the city’s culture and community. Malmö is famously known as ‘the city of parks’ and the site of this most recent project serves to reinforce that traditional image of Malmö. Slussplan lies within walking distance of the city, providing a tranquil space which is just a short trip from the city’s thriving commercial heart. This novel inner-city park is in the perfect location for those who appreciate culture, sport, exercise and entertainment, yet don’t have the time to fully get away thanks to their hectic schedules.

Slussplan has also seen the addition of a new award-winning residential building, comprising 12 floors of apartments built around a communal inner courtyard. Situated in prime position at the edge of the canal, this development has helped to encourage social diversity and sustainability, providing rental properties and apartments for sale of varying sizes, each with plenty of natural light and magnificent views over the renovated Slussplan Urban Park.

The intention of this development was to promote sustainability by incorporating natural, sustainable materials, primarily brick and wood, into the design. This helped reduce the carbon footprint, while simultaneously ensuring that the development was complementary to the local building style and aesthetics. Construction began on the development in spring 2010, and this area of Malmö has subsequently been transformed by large amounts of inward investment, with a real focus on sustainability, both in the private properties, as well as the exterior community spaces.

Designed by Mandaworks, an urban design and landscape architect studio in Sweden, for the Malmö Municipality, this project is a triumph of landscaping architecture, weaving together infrastructure, environmental sustainability and a focus on fostering a greater sense of community to create a new area for urban ecology and recreational space. Mandaworks wanted to use natural materials, particularly wood, for the project, as it supported sustainability and had the aesthetic qualities that it was looking for at this particular site. Following the outright ban imposed upon tropical hardwood in Stockholm, along with a growing trend in European cities of legislating against, and voluntarily avoiding the use of timber imported from the tropics in public projects, Mandaworks wanted to ensure that the materials chosen were sourced from sustainably-managed, non-tropical forests. Kebony’s sustainable wood was therefore selected for the ‘urban hang-out’ benches along the promenade, due to the material’s positive impact in reducing demand for high-performance tropical timber, while not compromising on structural qualities.

A third of the world’s rainforests have disappeared in the last 50 years, a loss of around 6 million hectares a year, and the equivalent of 8.5 million football pitches. One of the reasons tropical forests are being cut down so rapidly is high demand for hardwoods, such as teak, for use in design and construction materials. This global demand for tropical hardwood is a major environmental issue; the Amazon alone provides 20% of the world’s fresh water and oxygen and, despite increasing regulation, deforestation is still happening on a vast scale and is responsible for 20% of global CO2 emissions. Kebony provides a sustainable alternative to tropical hardwoods and therefore circumvents the need for deforestation.

Kebony’s environmental credentials have been proven by environmental consulting firm Bergfald & Co, which demonstrated that Kebony has a substantially lower carbon footprint than its tropical hardwood equivalents. The results of this study show that the carbon footprint for Brazilian ipê is in the range of 7500–15,000 kilograms per cubic metre; whilst the carbon footprint of modified Kebony is approximately 459 kilograms per cubic meter, both figures include treatment and transportation to Northern Europe. Kebony is FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council), which incentivises forest owners and managers to uphold FSC principles to ensure forest management and environmental benefits. All Kebony woods also carry the Swan environmental label certifying its sourcing from sustainable forests. Kebony’s environmentally-friendly patented technology is also fully compliant with EU Timber Legislation. This paves the way for a future in which wood is an integral and, most importantly, sustainable part of the construction industry.

Developed in Norway, the patented Kebony technology is an environmentally-friendly process, which modifies sustainably-sourced softwoods by heating the wood with furfuryl alcohol – an agricultural by-product. By polymerising the wood’s cell wall, the softwoods permanently take on the attributes of tropical hardwood including high durability, hardness and dimensional stability, without the need for tropical deforestation.

For Kebony, this waterside urban landscaping project follows another recent project at Fjord City, Oslo, a publically-accessible park and bathing complex. Here, there was a similar effort to capitalise on Kebony’s strong eco credentials and durability to transform a post-industrial waterfront into a recreational space of this nature. In both cases, Kebony’s versatility as a material has rendered it invaluable for the construction of everything from street furniture to public boardwalks. The silver-grey patina that the wood develops over its elongated life-span has also singled it out as a popular material for architects in marine settings like these, where its matured colour is frequently a perfect complement to the setting.

Martin Arfalk, of Mandaworks, commented: “We wanted the park to be a lasting space for public recreation and Kebony’s wood is suitably durable that it will stand up to wearing and weathering. Its attractive natural aesthetic also perfectly complements the park’s character and we would love to make use of Kebony in our future projects.”

Per Thyberg, Country Manager of Kebony Sweden, added: “It is gratifying to see Kebony once again selected for the development of a recreational public space like this, where its durability and beautiful aesthetics will contribute to the public’s enjoyment of the Slussplan Urban Park.”