Kirunaa city located in northern Sweden approximately 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, is the protagonist of a extraordinary and unique project in the world, started in 2007. This town, of approx 20,000 inhabitants, will be moved approximately 3 km further east. In short, a walking city!
More than 3,000 buildings and houses will be relocated, many others have already been rebuilt to form the new historic centre, inaugurated in September 2022. Some historic buildings will be dismantled and reassembled, more than 6,000 people relocated, in acolossal operation which will be concluded, according to the architectural firm entrusted with the task, not before 2033.
In this article, we see what the project consists of relocation And because a city needs to be moved.
Why move a city and what happened to Kiruna: the iron mines
The Swedish forests form the backdrop, an uncontaminated nature with a temperature that reaches minus fifteen below zero in winter and offers constant light in summer. This is it Kirunaone historic city founded in 1899. The question that may arise is why build an inhabited settlement in a such a remote placebut the reasons are quickly explained: Kiruna was built by state-owned mining company LKABbecause it rises above the largest iron mine in the worldwhere every day a quantity of mineral is extracted that would be enough to build the equivalent of approximately 6 Eiffel Towers. The mining industry in this town employs about two-thirds of the population.
But the excavation face of the huge mine is in continuous expansion and is getting closer and closer to the historic center of the city, causing structural damage to buildings. To prevent further problems, the mining company proposed an ambitious project: move the entire city about 3 kilometers to the east.
This massive relocation plan, with an estimated cost of 3 billion eurosplans to move approx 3,000 buildings, The 65 percent of the total. The project will be financed almost entirely by the same state-owned company that operates the mine, LKAB. The design was entrusted to the White Arkitekter architectural firm, which will thus lead one of the urban planning operations most extraordinary in the world.
Demolitions, moves and reconstruction: how to relocate the city center
But how do you move an entire city? The urban planning project that won the tender in 2013 is based on three types of intervention:
- construction from scratchregarding most houses and buildings
- disassembly and reassemblyespecially for some historic buildings
- relocation of the entire building
As regards this last type of transfer, there are a series of online ones awesome videos where you can see the wooden houses, typical of the Scandinavian country, which are transported entirely on trucks, which become a sort of enormous caravan.
Ex-novo reconstructions instead involve the creation of a central district, orbiting around the new one Town Hall Square and to the new one Clock towerinaugurated in 2018. You can see, below, the photo of the new Town Hall, called Kristallen (“the Crystal”). This building has a particular circular structure and was designed by the Danish architect Henning Larsen.
A special treatment instead it will be up to the historic church of Kirunaa building in Scandinavian architectural style, built between 1909 and 1912, again on behalf of the LKAB mining company. This building will totally come disassembled and reassembled in the new center, not far from the town hall, in a complex operation that should begin in 2025 and finish at the end 2026. The inhabitants of Kiruna are particularly attached to their town church, which was voted by the Swedes in 2001 as “the most beautiful building, built before 1950”.
So what will become of Kiruna? The relocation of much of the town is certainly not an easy decision for its inhabitants to accept, but the city, accustomed to living with the challenges of the inhospitable nature of the far north, seems ready to thrive even after this great change.
If you find yourself visiting it, you will not only be able to admire one rebuilt citybut not far from the new center you will also find the iconic ice hotelone of the most famous attractions in the region.
