From working-class port district to high-tech hub
The old port facilities in Harburg have also been converted, just as they have in Hamburg proper. Channel Hamburg is the second major urban development project to take place in the Hanseatic city, following HafenCity. Harburg’s city centre will also be revitalised, as the former working-class district is becoming an increasingly attractive place to live and work. Several hundred technology and science-based companies have set up near the Hamburg University of Technology, so micro-apartments are in huge demand among students and young professionals. Property developer BPD won widespread approval for its plan to create primarily residential space on the approximately 3,220m2 site of the run-down former Harburg Center. Some 203 micro-apartments and 31 residential units are being built over around 8,400m² of living space in the HAR6 residential and commercial complex. The building, which has been designed by Schenk + Waiblinger, enjoys a prominent location between Harburg Town Hall and the railway station. Once the construction work is complete, an outside staircase will lead directly to the Seevepassage pedestrian precinct.
Collaboration with the client and PORR’s expert teams
Although the complex has 12 floors in total, the variable building heights and the loosely structured building units mean that it does not have the same hulking appearance as the Harburg Center once did. With brick façades facing the street, it blends in seamlessly with its surroundings. “The client particularly appreciated the way we worked intensively on the project and understood it as a whole,” says Björn Motzkus, Technical Branch Manager of PORR Building Construction, North Region. The company also made an impression with its partnership-based approach to working with customers and collaborating with its PORR sister companies. In this case, the construction site’s cramped inner-city location meant that the expertise of PORR Equipment Services was particularly in demand when it came to the construction site logistics, as were the concrete technology experts from the PORR Düsseldorf branch.
