Nyköping Skavsta (SE)

Inhabited milieu's challenges

Skavsta – today known for its international airport – is located in a strategic position, seven km from Nyköping and about 100 km south of the City of Stockholm city, approximately 1/3 of Sweden’s population can be reached within 100 km.
Stockholm Skavsta Airport was historically an important military airbase, F11. Of local interest are also the ancient bronze settlements along the nearby protected cultural landscape of Nyköpingsån.The site is today mostly surface car parking and unbuilt land.
The construction of the East Link, a new national railway line, with a station planned next to the airport will make Skavsta a unique intermodal node in Sweden.This gives the opportunity for the area to be developed, to create a resilient and self-sufficient area where working, commuting, travelling, services and recreation are interwoven through solutions that encourage creativity and innovation.
Due to the noise levels from the airport, permanent housing is not suitable at Skavsta. Skavsta can however provide space for the establishment and growth of new companies. One of the biggest challenges is that the separation between the working and housing functions, the focus on efficiency, flows and costs optimization in the design of the buildings often results in business areas being experienced as dead. Transportation hubs have a high requirement for design, with a focus on efficiency, flows and capacity.
An initial structural plan has been approved by the municipality, pinpointing the strategic elements that will organize the new area. Skavsta Square, the link to the transport hub, Skavsta Boulevard, the area’s main street, and the Park. The new physical structure needs to accommodate blocks that allow the clustering of companies in different scales and the flexibility to be developed in different stages, as well as innovative logistic business.

Questions to the competitors

With the vision of “Innovative Skavsta a unique, resilient and self-sufficient area for a clustering of companies” the goal is to forecast a development for the next 20 years.
Some factors are key for it to happen successfully:
A carefully modulated space for commuters/travellers, a common and uninterrupted space which can support a smooth everyday travel experience. How can that space meet both the needs of the people commuting and the travellers arriving at the airport? How can such a living environment be created with urban planning and architecture as tools? Which structures bring people closer together? How can the central public square be reinvented for this context?
When it comes to the physical structure for future companies and industries in the area, how can the familiar concepts be challenged to support innovation in a multitude of ways? What does innovation mean for the physical structure? When it comes to energy, the area has the reachable goal to become self-sufficient. It also implies new ways of promoting social and ecological aspects in the living environment. How can a unique, resilient, and self-sufficient structure be reinvented? How can it support the clustering of future companies in such way that new synergies are created between them?
Old ideas about how all the strategic elements that will organize the development are designed should be challenged to create something unique. The proposal should explore the spatial and functional qualities of the public square. How can the components of the transportation hub be interwoven into a whole living environment? How do we find co-use and all-day use of the area as opposed to a large and empty space? How can the views and needs of children be considered in transportation hubs, where the efficiency of the transport is often the focus? How can the green structure be integrated into the square? What impact can people’s behaviours and lifestyles have on the physical environment? How can greenery, recreation and stormwater management be integrated into the public space in a new way?