Power of Places

Nyhamnen

Team Layered’s survey of the Ferry Terminal became the starting point for a multi-year reactivation of the area. By drawing on the site’s history and existing structures, the team translated their findings into prototypes. Step by step, the prototypes opened and transformed the Ferry Terminal, from a closed and fenced-off area into a new green living room for the people of Malmö.

In spring 2024, the first prototypes were implemented: the car ramp became an amphitheatre, fencing was rewoven into pergolas, and concrete barriers were given new life as furniture. Together with local craftspeople, artists and the public, a first shift in how the site was used took place. The inauguration of the amphitheatre in summer 2024 marked the beginning of reclaiming the Ferry Terminal as a public meeting place.

In 2025, another of Team Layered’s proposed prototypes was realised: an urban forest ↗ with 240 trees planted on top of asphalt. The urban forest functions as an open test area for climate-resilient vegetation, with different soil mixtures used to understand what enables the trees to grow best. The prototype will continue to be developed for at least five years.

Through this practice-based research process, the City of Malmö is gradually opening the area to the public while testing new uses. Team Layered’s survey and prototypes are summarised in a management and development plan that provides the City of Malmö with strategies for how the site may continue to develop over the next three to five years. Read the report further down the page.

“An important lesson for us has been working with prototypes, and especially understanding how prototypes can serve as a way of communicating and opening conversations with a broader group – not only those who usually take part in technical discussions about urban development.”, Daniel Feldman, Team Layered

The City of Malmö is taking the work from Power of Places forward.

In autumn 2025, Nyhamnen was designated a national transformation lab within the innovation initiative Shift Sweden ↗. In this context, the Ferry Terminal serves as a physical meeting place and testbed for continuing to explore the proposition that “in the future, management and development are the same thing”.

“Power of Places began with prototypes and tests, but still behind fences as the site was enclosed. In the next step, we have built a forest, opened the area and begun to care for it as a public place in the city – which is also what it is meant to become permanently in the long term.”, Kristoffer Nilsson, Strategist, City of Malmö