Man-made peninsula being built at Masthuggskajen in Gothenburg

03.09.2019

Masthuggskajen in Gothenburg is now under construction, a development which will accommodate 1,300 homes and 5,000–6,000 jobs, with restaurants, pre-schools and hotels – and a man-made peninsula. COWI has won the contract to produce a tender specification setting out how the peninsula is to be built.

Masthuggskajen is part of Älvstaden and one of Gothenburg’s biggest urban development projects and will create a clearer link between Linnégatan and the Majorna area and the river, forming a new district with a mixture of urban dynamism and local life.

One of the toughest challenges for the project is the construction of an artificial peninsula to be built out into the river. The purpose of the peninsula is to expand the usable land in the most attractive part of the area around Järntorget and Masthuggskajen.

“It is fantastic for us to have won this contract – a project that really stands out from the crowd. Nothing like this has ever been done in Gothenburg before, and there are plenty of technical challenges, not least because there is a very deep layer of clay where the peninsula is to be built, but we have a pretty good idea of how to do it,” says Lars-Bertil Ekman, Business Development Manager for Urban Planning West at COWI.

Among other things, the peninsula will be home to the Global Business Gate office complex, a 24-storey tower providing 2,500 new jobs. Riksbyggen and Stena Fastigheter will also be building homes here.

Great technical complexity

The development of the new peninsula calls for extensive construction work of great technical complexity. Part of COWI’s brief is to produce a tender document for a turnkey contract for the groundworks and the load-bearing structures. COWI’s responsibilities also include the coordination of technical solutions between the project and other nearly works at all stages from planning and design to completion.

Facts about Masthuggskajen

• The area between Järntorget, the Långgata streets and the Göta river will provide 1,300 homes and 5,000–6,000 new jobs, with restaurants, pre-schools, cultural facilities and hotels.

• Masthuggskajen is being developed by the City of Gothenburg and a consortium made up of Elof Hansson Fastigheter, Folkets Hus Göteborg, Hotell Draken, NCC, Riksbyggen, Stena Fastigheter Göteborg and Älvstranden Utveckling. The area is part of Älvstaden and the project is the first to be certified under Citylab, the Sweden Green Building Council’s certification system for sustainable urban development.

• The first residents are scheduled to arrive in 2023, and the whole area should be finished in 2026.