Hafenquartier Südliche Speicherstraße honored with the German City Building Prize for the year 2025
The city of Dortmund has once again made a significant mark in urban development, with the Southern Warehouse Street Harbor Quarter winning the prestigious German Urban Planning Prize 2025. This award recognises sustainable and innovative contributions to urban building culture.
A total of 61 projects from across Germany applied for the prize, with 25 being inspected on-site. The jury praised the Harbor Quarter for its model-like transformation of an industrial area into a future-oriented urban quarter with a focus on research, creativity, and digitalization.
The Harbor Quarter, a joint project involving both private and public actors, boasts a diverse urban space that includes aspects such as gastronomy, education, and consulting. The city developed the quarter by placing the Academy for Theater and Digitality as its own project and awarding further plots to private investors with strong concepts.
The quarter is now a vibrant, attractive, and lively district. It features four high-rise projects that are already completed, including the Education and Consulting House Homeport North City, the Lensing Media Port, the Lighthouse at the Dock with the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Technology "ISST", and the Academy for Theater and Digitality.
The public space has been designed with a high quality of stay, preserving or incorporating harbor-typical elements and adding over 90 new trees and wildflower meadows. This redevelopment respects the historical context while providing modern infrastructure and amenities, making it a catalyst for revitalizing Dortmund’s waterfront district and enhancing both livability and economic prospects.
The prize-winning initiative for 2025 aligns with trends seen in other recent award-winning urban projects in Germany, where mixed-use, sustainability, and social integration are central principles. Although detailed specifics about the exact architectural elements or designers for the Southern Warehouse Street Harbor Quarter were not found, the emphasis on a sustainable, multifunctional urban quarter characterizes the prize-winning initiative.
The Southern Warehouse Street Harbor Quarter will be part of a traveling exhibition "Building the City" and a book publication of the same name, set to be shown nationwide from September. The quarter was also funded by the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE), federal, and North Rhine-Westphalia state urban development funding.
Dortmund last won the German Urban Development Prize in 2018 with the development of the "Hörder Triad". The city's latest win further underscores its commitment to sustainable urban development and innovation.
The prize-winning Southern Warehouse Street Harbor Quarter possesses a lifestyle that blends research, creativity, digitalization, gastronomy, education, and consulting, creating a diverse and dynamic home-and-garden within Dortmund's urban landscape. With its rejuvenation of a former industrial area into a future-oriented urban quarter, the Harbor Quarter embodies an innovative home-and-garden design that respects the historical context while providing modern infrastructure, thereby enhancing both livability and economic prospects.
