Architect and Builder August/September 2019

Battery Park, V&A Waterfront OVERALL HERITAGE AWARD Battery Park is a 12,000m 2 urban park situated at a key entranceway to the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. Developed as the nucleus of a larger urban vision for the district, the site includes a park and piazza that conceals a 1,206-bay parking facility as well as new pedestrian routes. The site is of archaeological importance as it contains the remnants of one of the city’s oldest structures - the coastal fortification the Amsterdam Battery. The project forms part of an urban design framework created by dhk for the V&A’s previously underutilised Canal District. During construction of Battery Park archaeological excavations revealed former datums which were used to inform the design. The raised park has been kept at the battery’s original inner courtyard level whilst planted edges above retail units on the piazza represent the estimated natural ground level that fronted the battery. This has resulted in an elevated park with views across the V&A and CBD but with the challenge of managing the transition between the two levels. Therefore, a large part of the design concept was manifested in bringing the park and piazza closer to one another. The vision was to create scale between the two levels and provide visual SAPOA Awards cues to visitors; offering a glimpse of the park while they meander along the canal edge. This was also achieved by means of soft and hard landscaping elements such as a concrete staircase as well as sloping and folding walls. Client & Developer: V&A Waterfront Architect & Urban Design: dhk Architects Project Manager: Igual Quantity Surveyor: BTKM Structural Engineers: LH Consulting Engineers Mechanical & Electrical Engineers: Element Consulting Engineers Fire Consultant & Wet Services: Solutionstation Health & Safety: Eppen-Burger & Associates Acoustic Consultant: Machoy Heritage Consultant: Nicolas Baumann Lift Consultant: Solutions for Elevating Traffic Engineers: GIBB; UrbanEQ Archaeologist: ACO Associates Land Surveyor: Joubert & Brink Landscaping: Planning Partners Main Contractor: Group Five 81

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