How Hamburg is Building With Water
Future Tides Film Series on Flood Resilience
How Hamburg is Building With Water | Future Tides Film No.3
Hamburg sits where the River Elbe meets the sea — and a new district has risen directly in the flood zone. Future Tides is a documentary series from the Holcim Foundation following the cities and city makers reinventing themselves in the face of climate change. Film 3 travels to Hamburg.
Last updated: July 28, 2026 Hamburg, Germany
Here, flood resilience draws upon innovative urbanism, with the film tracing the transformation of 157 hectares of former port land into the HafenCity district, which improves quality of life, enhances commerce, and protects the city.
It's the third of three films drawn from European cities and the talent reinventing them in the face of climate change.
After Future Tides profiled Manchester and Rotterdam, this third film on flood resilience convenes three of the voices shaping Hamburg's relationship to water: Reiner Nagel, Chairman of the Baukultur Federal Foundation; Andreas Kleinau, CEO of HafenCity Hamburg GmbH; and architect Evelyn Pasdzierny, Director at gmp Architekten's Hamburg Rainvilleterrasse office.
Where the city once relied on dikes and marshland to hold back the Elbe, HafenCity took a different path: streets and ground floors raised roughly eight meters above sea level, flood protection walls woven into the urban fabric, and a working harbor kept alive at its edge — expanding Hamburg's inner city by 40 percent.
The problems that come out of climate change can be solved by making beautiful things together, with all of the engineers involved in the project Reiner Nagel Chairman of the Baukultur Federal Foundation
HafenCity came up with the approach to lift everything up, so the street was on top of the ground floor. That brought life back to the city, because people really felt connected to the buildings again. Evelyn Pasdzierny Director at gmp Architekten
Future Tides Hamburg completes the series' European chapter on flood resilience. The Holcim Foundation's documentary film series will return to new cities as the Foundation's focus evolves, carrying the same on-the-ground approach into each new chapter.
The film series ties directly to themes established at the Foundation's 2025 Forum in Venice, which brought architects, engineers, urban planners, climate scientists, and policymakers together to address one of the era's most urgent challenges: how to build and support flood-resilient cities and communities. You can read more insights from the event through the Foundation's Forum Digest report.
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