Moringa, Hamburg's HafenCity

Living in harmony with nature: Moringa, Hamburg’s healthiest and most sustainable residential complex is being built in the HafenCity quarter.

Named after the miracle medicinal plant moringa oleifera, the cutting-edge Moringa residential high-rise sets new standards in sustainability and innovation. Substantially more than 50 percent of the building is constructed using recyclable materials. All materials and components are designed to be reused in either the biological or technical cycle. So instead of incurring disposal costs at the end of a lifecycle, the reused materials generate added value while conserving resources – in keeping with the Cradle to Cradle® (C2C) design principle. In this way, the project delivers innovative answers to the current challenges facing the city of Hamburg – population growth, land use, housing shortage, air quality, and raw material consumption – and (over) fulfills the requirements for the award of the HafenCity Ecolabel Platinum label.

Moringa is being developed by MORINGA GmbH by Landmarken in cooperation with kadawittfeldarchitektur. For this special project, the client has relied on Drees & Sommer’s technical experience and the C2C expertise of EPEA – Part of Drees & Sommer. The experts are supporting the sustainable project with Cradle to Cradle mentoring and Circular Engineering, and providing building physics, energy design, facade planning, building services engineering, facility management and Green Building management services. The interdisciplinary project team works hand in hand on all issues.

With a complex green facade and extensive rooftop planting, the development creates more green space than the footprint of its buildings. This will have a positive impact on residents, the microclimate and air quality, retention behavior, and biodiversity. In this context, the facade planners came up with some ingenious solutions. Rainwater and gray water are collected and processed for irrigation and toilet flushing, and microplastics are filtered out.

EPEA uses a positive list to ensure that all materials used are healthy and recyclable. Building Material Scout serves as a valuable tool for material selection and documentation. C2C ensures that only ecological materials, such as clay building board, solid wooden walls and RC concrete are selected, and that any products with problematic ingredients are strictly excluded. Components must be easily removable, and all materials used must be removable, separable by material type, and reusable. The building thus becomes a valuable raw material repository, as documented by the Building Circularity Passport®.

In addition to ecology, social aspects play a key role in the project, as some 30 percent of the apartments will be publicly subsidized housing. The diverse mix of apartments is supplemented by coworking and food and beverage retail areas. In total, the building has a gross floor area of more than 24,000 square meters. The application for planning approval was submitted in early 2021, with project completion scheduled for the mid-2024.

Services provided by the team included:

• Building services equipment
• Facade planning
• Energy design
• Certification by HafenCity Ecolabel
• Circular Engineering
• Building physics
• Technical project coordination
• FM Quick Check