Ruten – from car park to active city park
Ruten City Park is a sunny story from a rainy region. Sandnes has got an urban city park for everyone on the local residents’ terms; it is a shining icon for inclusion – literally.
Project owner: Municipality of Sandnes, Norway
Architect: Spacegroup
Collaborators: Betongpark, Light Bureau, Metallplan, DIFK, AROS, Consult 1 Entrepenør, Superunion/VI Architects
Lead users:
All groups of the community – children, youths, adults and elderly people – for activities and experiences individually and sharing with others.
Methods:
User group participation, children’s festival task work, interim city park pilot build and use and pop-up workshops
Awards:
Innovation Award for Inclusive Design 2023, category winner Architecture (Design and Architecture Norway) + Norwegian government award for sustainable city development 2022 (Attraktiv by).
27 %
of the Sandes population is under the age of 20. The city has encouraged its young people to participate from the beginning of the Ruten City Park project.
From hard to soft infrastructure Reducing legal risk
The town of Sandnes had a to transform a barren car park into an urban oasis for the broad range of the city's inhabitants, to exchange hard infrastructure for soft in a car-based oil town. A luxuriant, active city park with space for large and small events was wanted Both challenges and opportunities lay in the fact of the area being a public transport hub with trunk roads on all sides.
A unanimous jury declared architecture office Spacegroup/Superunion's ‘The Ring’ to be the winning proposal for Ruten City Park. A large, luminous circle frames Ruten’s festival space and has become a clearly visible landmark in the urban fabric and upon arrival from the train station. The architects have placed particular emphasis on Ruten’s being able to function for both day-to-day life and festive events. Ruten will be the very hub and meeting place between the railway in the west, the Amfi shopping centre in the old mill buildings in the east, the district courthouse in the south, the bus station and planned residential/commercial buildings in the north.
Approach: Pop-up workshops provided direction
The pathway to a vibrant, inclusive city park has been paved by the young people of Sandnes. With 27 % of the Sandes population under the age of 20, and in a healthy democratic spirit, the city has encouraged its young people to participate from the beginning. The Sandnes youth council, a party-politically neutral body for the municipality that safeguards the interests of young people in the city, has been actively included in the entire process and has contributed young people's wishes and premises for development. And when the Ruten City Park was presented to the city council, local young people gave a clear message to the politicians about the direction the park should take.
The participation process in the project was broad and inclusive. In addition to close dialogue with citizens, businesses, planning authorities and political leaders, Spacegroup chose to take a smart and innovative approach: on a number of occasions, they went down to what was to become Ruten, interviewing and holding workshops through which the local population could provide input and direction.
To the pleasure of many, it became clear at an early stage that Ruten City Park would house a skatepark. Betongpark, Norway's largest developer of skate parks, makes a point of working actively with the local environment when developing new parks. Thus, input from the local skating community in Sandnes became an important factor in the development of the park alongside the necessity of catering for all levels of skatepark sports enthusiasts.
Sustainability as a principle
Climate adaptation is another innovative move. Recycled biochar is used on the site to take future floods into account – a threat that is no longer so distant. The park is actually built on wetlands and marshes and could therefore be prone to flooding.
With measures such as biochar in the soil, planting trees and creating rain-beds to handle stormwater, as well as other climate adaptations, Ruten City Park is set to have a long life.
People visiting the park encounter exciting biological diversity and a manifold design informed by climate and reuse considerations.
Sandnes centre's largest transport hub and car park have made way for a vibrant, inclusive city park. They have rearranged bus routes and made the streets free of cars. An interdisciplinary approach to transport and urban development has made traffic areas more efficient.
I would like to commend Sandnes municipality and Spacegroup for a good participation process. We in the City Youth Council feel that our voice was really listened to and taken into account. It meant a lot to be part of the process.
Result: An identity icon
The city park creates interplay on a grand scale. Trees, brooks, playgrounds, the skatepark, fountains and places to sit – everything is framed with a large lluminated circle. It is a landmark and icon for inclusion, clearly visible from the air to anyone flying over Sandnes.
."In particular, the jury wishes to highlight the value of Ruten City Park as a non-commercial gathering place that welcomes a diversity of people. Here, everything is in place for markets, concerts and tournaments – in addition to its daily use as a playground, skatepark, meeting place and a place to spend some quiet time. The park provides possibilities - and we get to choose how to make use of it!” John Arne Bjerknes, Jury Leader and Category Leader of Architecture, Innovation Award for Inclusive Design
The central location ensures you can easily get to the city park, but the developers have also taken important steps to make it easy to get around to the various zones. Flights of steps have been replaced with step-free solutions. Clear guidance lines and good lighting ensure that you can safely find where you are going.
The openness, moreover, makes it easy to get an overview of the space.
And the Ring, the shining symbol, is not just a beautiful piece of design. It also functions as rain proction, an urban umbrella for the community.
Ruten City Park is an urban space for pleasant day-to-day experiences, but its size is sufficient for much larger gatherings. Options include concerts, circuses, markets, shooting ranges and May 17th celebrations. In this way, Ruten City Park has what it takes to become a shared space for special moments and memories, on your own or in the company of others.
Benefits: A model for social sustainability in practice
Ruten is an important urban renewal project and actively used by the population. By letting residents participate in the process, and by taking their input seriously, Ruten City Park has become a safe, luxuriant identity marker of the city’s diversity.
In Ruten City Park, Sandnes has created a democratic, inclusive meeting point which embraces the entire spectrum of the city's users and needs in a thoughtful, elegant manner.
Everyone is welcome here, and the place is used by all age groups. It even has a separate little sheltered area specially designed for people with a substance use disorder, who are otherwise forgotten or chased away. The new Ruten is a lesson in social sustainability in practice.
Crime is also documented to have decreased since Ruten was redesigned. The lighting strategy, with the Ring as the largest light source, transforms the open space into an area that is safe to cross and safe to be in around the clock all year round.
In 2022, Sandnes won the award for "Most attractive city" in Norway. Ruten City Park was singled out in the jury statement as "a lesson in social inclusion." It is a recognition that suits the project well.