Storms, floods, waterfront cities - how Hamburg confronts the rising tide

Brand new, right on top of the old. Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. Photo / supplied

Hamburg is a port city on the River Elbe in Germany. It's 90km from the coast. Still, on November 9, 2007, a storm in the North Sea created a high tide in the city almost 6m higher than normal. People in the HafenCity district sat indoors and watched the water rise past their windows. It was, some said, like looking into an aquarium. But they stayed dry.

Quite a different experience from 1962, when flooding killed 300 people.

What changed? By 2007, the rundown warehouses of HafenCity were being redeveloped and replaced to create a new, flood-proof precinct with a mix of "affordable and market-rate housing complexes", office buildings and cultural spaces. All up, a place for 15,000 people to live and 45,000 to work.

It's been so successful, Hamburg is now a world leader in answering the question that confronts all coastal cities, including our own: How do you increase public use of the waterfront when you know sea levels are rising?

The catastrophic Hamburg flood of 1962. Photo / supplied

Dykes protect much of the city, but not HafenCity, which is sited on a pair of islands in the river. There, they adopted three other measures.

The first is at least 2500 years old: it's a terp, or mound, built on a flood plain. Many of the new buildings, streets and other public spaces are raised on a sand terrace about 8m above the floodline. Do it right, and you actually can build on sand.

That wasn't possible for existing buildings, though, some of which have Unesco heritage protection. So their ground floors and basements are specially sealed, doors and windows included, and there are direct exits through upper levels. The public areas are designed to be floodable and some of the streets are elevated.

And the third approach? They commissioned a magnificent public building, as a magnet to draw people into the area. The Elbphilharmonie, designed by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, is a concert hall sheathed in shimmering glass, like a towering wave, built directly on top of a former cocoa warehouse.

The building includes a large auditorium and a smaller concert chamber, restaurants, bars, public terraces with panoramic river views and an open rooftop area for functions and performances. There's also some luxury accommodation, a conference centre and a gym.

The Elbphilharmonie's open rooftop. Photo / supplied

The main hall has the stage in the middle, so there is "unprecedented proximity" between audience and performers and the atmosphere is "almost like a football stadium". Possibly, it depends who's playing.

A concert hall designed to create the atmosphere of a football stadium. Photo / supplied

Statement architecture isn't always the best answer to a city's problems, but Elbphilharmonie is now one of the main concert venues in Europe - and that's saying a lot. Sometimes, great buildings make a massive difference.

Shimmering and wavelike above the Hamburg skyline. Photo / supplied

Design for Living is a regular series in Canvas magazine.