Place: Frederiksberg, Denmark
Team: MASU Planning, AI Gruppen (consultant)
Client: Municipality of Frederiksberg
Size: 3.500m2
Timeline: 2015-2017
Magneten Sensory Garden
The raised, shielded garden creates a green oasis for people with special needs. The garden offers carefully designed sense stimulation on the user’s own terms.
Magneten is a municipal activity and social center for citizens with physical and mental disabilities. On top of the center lies the Magneten Sensory Garden, providing users with a safe, green, and recreational space in an urban setting. We designed a protected garden on deck that provides a variety of experiences that can be used in treatment and brings happiness and joy to everyday life.
A secret garden on deck – a perfect frame for treatment and a key to happiness
Therapists and users wanted a shielded green sensory garden that all users could enjoy and use in treatment: smaller intimate spots for one-on-one sessions, larger spaces for group activities and areas for physical activities like balance exercises. Most importantly, the garden needed to accommodate a multitude of nature experiences through all senses.
Our raised garden provides a controlled environment and the best possible foundation to support the treatment methods at Magneten. The staff strategically limit sensory input. Too many impressions make it impossible for users to experience anything, but in a calm, controlled space, people can focus and enjoy a specific sensory impression.
For some users, this is their only way of getting out in nature, smelling flowers, feeling rain and experiencing sun and sky. Being in the middle of Copenhagen, space is a limited resource and this garden needed truly to be a green oasis throughout the year. Creating a garden on deck is a perfect way to use a space twice and, in this case, it was the answer to the wishes of users and therapists.
Designed to evoke the senses
The user involvement process resulted in three overarching themes, all of which were incorporated into the final design.
The garden consists of a vegetable garden, a bonfire garden, and a flower garden. These spaces vary in size and design to support different activities and stimulate different senses.
In the vegetable garden, there are fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, planting beds, and a greenhouse with beehives located behind it.
The flower garden serves as a calm oasis, offering intimate seating areas surrounded by blooming perennials, ornamental grasses, insects, and birds.
In the bonfire garden, a small building with a fireplace creates a focal point. A fire is lit almost daily – simply to watch, to pop popcorn, or to grill sausages – and the space also functions as a safe and communal meeting place.