Sjödalsparken

Already in our first encounter with Sjödalsparken, we noted the 200 m long, sharp raise in the ground which revealed that the river Fullerstaån flowed in a culvert under our feet. Sometime in the 50s it was covered and an important link in Huddinge's extensive water system was hidden from the public. We began to map the river in general and parallel we analyzed the site in detail. Bringing the river to the fore again became the starting point for the work and the project shows what effort can be achieved with a hidden value – in this case a secret river.

In a sense, our design is a restoration of the existing landscape. In the valley, where Sjödalsparken is located, the river has flowed long before there were people here. Now it is alive again but in a new form where a series of different water elements provide new experiences of the water and the park. A movement of water that goes from artificial to natural, starting with a channel and ending with a pond. It is a 240 meter long system based on self-fall, whose speed are regulated in real time based on the water levels in the culvert.

The water is not only a poetic story of the park, it also adds ecological value with establishment of wetlands, different layers of vegetations and by treating one third of the park's open fields as meadows. The paving stones have been recycled, the existing furniture reused and supplemented with Huddinge's longest park sofa.

At the same time, there is also reuse in spatial form. The new proposal preserves the basic structure of the park and the efforts focus on improving existing qualities and adding new ones where possible. In the existing and popular grass roundel in the center of the park, the ground has been cupped to handle torrential rain. It is just an example of how the park is constantly a "both and" - a large-scale landscape space that meets a public park - a 240 meter long water system in the middle of Tyrestaån's 240 km² lake system - the big and the small in one.