Central Plads in Korsør brings the town together.

Korsør’s centre was divided in two commercial areas without a natural link between them.  Town events often drew visitors to one commercial area and the municipality wanted a better throughflow of visitors through the town’s streets and squares to add more vibrancy to the urban scene. So it was a long-held ambition to establish better linkage between the port arcades (Havnearkaderne) and other retail streets in Korsør.

A large parking area between the shopping streets and the port arcades required a major rehabilitation. The dream was to create a multifunctional square with room for all.

“We wanted a multifunctional square with room for citizens of all ages and from all neighbourhoods. There had to be room for market days, play and physical activity. At the same time, we wanted to maintain a focus on the town’s maritime history.”
- Ole Lund Sørensen, city planning architect in Slagelse Municipality.

Renovation

To generate life on the square, exercise equipment for the elderly was installed, a playground, skate park and more. Moreover, exciting effects using lighting were chosen and various different paving surfaces such as coloured asphalt, rubberised paving and gravel. Numerous urban trees were planted on the square to create a green frame around gatherings in the town.

Challenges and solutions

Urban trees had to be planted in an area with impervious paving and it was therefore important they had access to root-friendly soil cells. ByMUNCH, together with the municipality, also wished to use stormwater as a resource and so equipped tree pits with Milford’s Climate adaptation with trees system. In this way, stormwater is channelled into the tree pit used to water the trees and superfluous water from the tree pit is led onwards to the drainage system.

On Solen Plads, the decision was taken to use channels to lead the water to the tree pits. Together with the landscape architect, we specially designed KerbCells that followed the water channels’ organic appearance. In this way we optimised the inflow of stormwater to the tree pit and could at the same time maintain the clean lines of the design.