Note · 18 October 2026
[fo]52/26Photography
Dokk1, Aarhus Ø and Pier 2 in Aarhus
On October 18 I was in Aarhus, walking along the water from the Dokk1 library. On one side stands a finished piece of city, on the other a park that said from the start it might not stay.
A library with no back
Dokk1 stands where the Aarhus Å flows into the harbour basin. The building was designed by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and opened on June 20, 2015: at the bottom a base with broad flights of steps, on top of it a glass prism holding the public library, above that a flat, many-sided slab reaching out equally far in every direction. That is why the building has no back, and under its roof you are already inside before you have found a door.
Dokk1 is the most visible part of Urban Mediaspace, with which the city and the Realdania foundation reorganised the harbour edge in front of the city centre. Beneath the base, 1,000 cars park fully automatically, the light rail stops partly under the building, and inside hangs a bronze bell by Kirstine Roepstorff that parents at the university hospital can ring when their child is born. In 2016 IFLA named Dokk1 Public Library of the Year.
A district on the container port
Across the water, Aarhus Ø is growing on the former container port. Building has been going on since 2007, the first residents moved in in 2012. Among the new buildings are the Bestseller office building with its natural stone facades by C.F. Møller, Navitas by Kjær & Richter and Christensen & Co, and the Lighthouse by 3XN, a residential tower of around 140 metres. The blue harbour cranes are still there.
A park made of leftovers
Since 2022 Pier 2 has had a city park that is deliberately laid out for a while only. The mounds are made of seabed sand from digging the canal on Pier 4, the paths of crushed old asphalt, and felled poplars lie in the grass as a habitat for insects. More than 440 species have been counted there so far. In the middle stands Domen, the Dome of Visions 3.0 by Kristoffer Tejlgaard, a dome of timber and polycarbonate that shelters a small house, a café and a greenhouse.
Aarhus is building on its edge, and you can watch it happen.
How Aarhus Ø was planned, what exactly the park on Pier 2 is made of and what happens beneath the dome, I have written up in full in the magazine, with 44 photos.
Read the whole story in the magazine →