Hamburg is reclaiming its long overlooked and underused industrial waterfront on the River Elbe with the development of HafenCity, currently the largest urban construction initiative under way in Europe. The 380 acre redevelopment zone will be a mix of office, retail, residential, and cultural uses.
There will be no shopping malls and the exact location of subway and bus stops was a matter of intense planning, as was the ratio of footpaths to roads. There will be five kilometers of road to 10 kilometers of footpaths with only 30 percent of the footpaths next to the streets. Pedestrians will use the other 70 percent to get around away from the roads.

When completed sometime around 2020, the district will have increased the size of the city center by 40 percent. A total of 19.4 million square feet of new construction is being planned, and much of it is being designed by a constellation of international starchitects.

Rem Koolhaas/OMA’s 23,000 square meter ring-shaped structure, formed of ten modular interlinked blocks, will house a science centre and aquarium, as well as a theaters, offices, laboratories, commercial and retail facilities.
Part of the building, approximately 8,500 square meters, will be located underground with a large part of this space being taken up by the aquarium. Above ground, terraces on various levels of the building will provide panoramic views across the city.
The design is a further development of the winning scheme designed by OMA in 2004.
Henning Larsen Architects won the competition to design the 50,000 square meter new headquarters for the Spiegel Group. The project, designed with emphasis on sustainability, is comprised of two U-shaped buildings, inspired by sailing ships, the white paper and light.
The buildings create two plazas, an arrival plaza towards Brooktorkai, and a plaza connecting to the harbor promenade.