Stig Lennart Andersson (SLA) was born on 30 of March 1957 (age 63 years), in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and is a landscape architect. In 1994, he founded a company in his name, Stig L. Andersson Landscape architects.
Later in 2005, it was named SLA A/S and is now jointly owned by three partners: Founder and Creative director- Stig L. Andersson, CEO- Mette Skjold, and Project director- Rasmus Astrup.
SLA A/S is a member of the Danish Association of Architectural Firms. Its projects involve both; the user and the developer, in achieving solutions that echo the systematic knowledge of how the environment, topography, resources, macro, and microclimate work together with the human experience of space. SLA continuously endeavors to experiment and augment the boundaries of urban space, urban planning, and landscape architecture.
Here are 15 Projects by SLA:
1. Viking Age Museum | SLA
The new Viking Age Museum was designed with a vision to create a more progressive new signature, that would convey the Viking Age’s unique cultural history, for one of the most popular museums in Norway. While the new landscape will be contributing to the eventful experience of the museum, the new extension would become a natural continuation of the Viking Ship Building, 1926 (by Arnstein Arneberg).
The aim of the design is primarily to create a strong and active connection between the museum and the park, along with connecting nature with history. This would result in the addition of new dimensions and complementing the understanding of the rich cultural history of Norway along with the unique natural amenities of Bygdoy.
The new museum park becomes a flexible frame for a variety of events and activities while turning the museum into an interesting gathering place and a new destination for the visitors and citizens to be able to experience the cultural history in a natural setting.
2. The Delta District in the future city of Vinge
The Delta District located in the future city of Vinge highlights that one landscaping can serve multiple purposes like utility and amenities. Basins and trenches, which are man-made, spread out through the landscape. Thus, creating a fine-meshed web which would lead the rainwater to an unnatural delta, made by men, for storage.
Hence preventing flooding while these basins, trenches along the delta highlight the water while providing for an urbanized area with a unique layer of nature for the people to gather, interact and enjoy.
3. Aabenraa – Market Town of the Future
Aabenraa, currently, has encountered some major challenges. These challenges being a high emigration rate, national competition, physical fragmentation, and international competition, resulting in limiting the city’s potential.
Along with COBE (architecture studio), SLA competed in, ‘Aabenraa – Market town of the Future’ the parallel assignment. The team’s design proposal was ‘At the forefront of the future – a healthy city to live in.’
Their masterplan majorly focused on the future transformation of the city, concerning a contemporary and stronger identity, through the creation of an Aabenraa. They believed that to salvage Aabenraa’s status as a unique and attractive market town while becoming a city at the leading edge of the future, they had to improve the city connections, city life along with its identity.
4. Reinvent Paris
SLA’s project Ternes-Villiers won the international mega competition Reinventer Paris, for the site, Ternes in Paris, France. It is a 5,500 square meter urban roof deck to be put across the Boulevard Peripheries, that is, the big ring road that circles the whole of Paris. The date of realization of this project is 2020-2022.
SLA will be providing environment-friendly urban spaces, public and gathering spaces along with underground parking, a network of pathways for pedestrians, green roofs, green facades, and a tea plantation.
5. Al Fay Park | SLA
Al Fay Park in Abu Dhabi is a 27,500 square meter park that has more than 2000 local vegetation as well as the national Ghaf tree. It is the first urban park in UAE centering on biodiversity, public events, and microclimate optimization.
Designed artistically and environmentally to be “the coolest place in town”. It will provide top-notch facilities for numerous sports, events, and kids’ playgrounds along with the meandering forest track which is one of Al Fay’s main attractions.
The high concentration of trees and contemporary irrigation systems will result in 40 percent less usage of water. The date of realization of this project is 2020-2021.
6. YUAN – International Master Garden
SLA founder, Stig L. Andersson, along with four other globally famous landscape designers, had been selected to design the International Master Gardens for the Beijing International Horticultural Expo 2019.
SLA’s Master Garden is YUAN, which is a Chinese sign for ‘garden’. SLA intends to give a new meaning to Chinese garden art in the anthropogenic era. YUAN draws on the profound data of China’s cultural antiquity, environment, art, design, and values and salvages these elements in a novel and intense way.
YUAN displays how we can use ancient Chinese principles and landscape in contemporary urban planning to advance the value of being and provide a connection between humans, culture, and nature. The project was completed in 2019.
7. Qasr Al Hosn Cultural Park
The historic Qasr Al Hosn Fort is 140,000 square meters and is Abu Dhabi’s oldest and most significant cultural building. It is a landmark rising from the sand as a splendid statuette, factually instituting the origin of Abu Dhabi.
The renovation of this site comprises a cultural park surrounding the fort and this Cultural Foundation. The littoral desert landscape is reinstated and divided obliquely into two distinct landscapes. On one side is a soft, exposed, and aesthetic desert landscape around the fort.
And on the other side is a concrete and planned area with strengthened local vegetation around this Cultural Foundation, merging the desert landscape with the contemporary urban grid edifice. This project was completed in 2019.
8. Bryggervangen and Sankt Kjelds Square
SLA won the competition for this project. Their proposal gave 34,900 square meters of Bryggervangen and Sankt Kjelds Square an irrepressible uniqueness as the city’s milestone for blue-green environment variation. It is a trial of the confinement road notion and encompasses in total the 2,300-foot-long Bryggervangen road and Sankt Kjelds Square with the roundabout in the center.
The project outlines a characteristic metropolitan landscape of Copenhagen, which absorbs from the distinctive biotopes in Copenhagen like the Utterslev Mose, Kongelunden, and Amager Fælled and applies their methods in a balanced and appealing way and generates nous of community.
This project was completed in 2019 and also won the prestigious award “Arets Arne 2020.”
9. The Springs
SLA designs 30,000 square meters of open urban refuge for Shanghai’s state-of-the-art commercial development, The Springs. It is enthused by “Shan Shui”, an old-fashioned art of Chinese landscape painting.
The Springs reminds us of the vivid mountain backdrops found all over pastoral China, echoing the mountain landscape with high, terraced towers covering a green open square.
The massing of the high rises generates a protected microclimate within this square, with the high rise positioning and foliage functioning to improve the quality of air, condense sound pollution and allow natural light into the metropolitan space. The project realization date was 2018-2020, but it is yet to be completed.
10. Hans Tavsens Park and Korsgade | SLA
SLA’s winning proposal ‘THE SOUL OF NØRREBRO’ is a unified metropolitan design and environment adaptation plan for Hans Tavsens Park and Korsgade in Nørrebro, Copenhagen in Denmark.
Spread over an area of 85,000 square meters, the design combines city landscape, resident community, and clever deluge way out, constructing upon the regions prevailing potentials and distinctive local chi.
Rainwater is harvested and used locally while surplus water from cloudbursts is led from the park to Peblinge Lake. The project realization date was 2019 but it is yet to be completed.
11. The light of Manila | SLA
SLA has planned a novel, huge and green public plaza for Manila’s new Icone Tower also known as the BCDA iconic building, that showcases an extensive range of activities, with a target to demonstrate how even high-rise buildings are capable of giving back facility and service values to the public realm.
A compact cover of local trees shelters the plaza and forms the atmosphere of a Filipino tropical forest and delivers shade as well as shelter, at the same time creating a lovely micro-climate, purifying the air, and cushioning stormwater.
The outcome is a novel type of meeting place in the heart of Manila that rejoices the cultural legacy and accentuates the strong Filipino liking for congregations and fête in public. The project realization date is 2021.
12. Ruseløkkveien
In the forthcoming years, SLA will be creating a series of urban spaces alive with events along with green roof terraces, providing the residents and the visitors with a green, appealing and recreational variety of opportunities at Ruseløkkveien in Oslo. These new spaces in the urbanscape help unify the activities and life in the building, with the city life character at the street level, into a greener and more eventful landscape design.
There is a re-establishment of the site’s unique historical context in these new urban spaces along with their connections across Ruseløkkveien. Terraces with green roofs covered with vegetation and Norwegian (coastal landscapes) inspired material help frame a serene view of the city along with the sea.
To manage the rainwater the terraces with green roofs and the terrain at sea level are designed sensitively while being combined with the local nature of the city. This results in a voluptuous, resilient, and an eventful gathering space in Central Oslo, which offers social, cultural accompanied with green values at various heights.
13. Central Lindholmen
This victorious project emphasizes a diverse and dense urban district surrounding the Lindholmen Science Park and the Chalmers University, in Lindholmen, Gothenburg. The project envisions transforming the Lindholmen area into a space filled with contrasts, for the users (business people, students, and the inhabitants) in the neighborhood to be able to benefit from each other.
The project further emphasizes the environment surrounding the existing units with various events and activities. The intermediate spaces between the existing buildings will be transformed from being undefined to more active and personalized urban spaces while giving them a unique identity relating to the river.
Very thorough and careful microclimate analyses have been done to ensure the design to be fully integrated while providing the city life with the best possible environment.
14. SUND Nature Park
SLA won the first prize in this invited competition. The area of the site is 37000 square meters. The landscape surrounding the new Mærsk Building was inspired by the history of its location and consists of mixed small biotopes with a variety of foliage.
The Panum Institute is a didactic institution with an extensive history and tradition along with a contemporary research center, which has thousands of regular users.
The novel landscape enables the conference between past and future, landscape and sophistication in a pleasing, green urban space. This project was completed in 2017.
15. Gellerup Urban Park | SLA
Gellerup/Toveshøj’s urban park is located in Aarhus, Denmark. SLA won the first prize in this invited design completion. It will be transforming this 13-hectare plot into a green pillar, a noticeable locality in Aarhus.
In SLA’s design, the city park will have from—playgrounds, climbing towers, and alfresco fitness—to orchards and orangeries. The result will be a completely new type of urban park that provides security, well-being, and innovative recreational opportunities for the people residing in the area. The date of realization of this project is 2014-2019.
