Art as an engine for landscape development

There is not a long tradition in Germany of regarding art as an engine for driving regional and landscape development. Nevertheless, artistic activity, intervention and orchestration can change, qualify and reinterpret the way spaces are perceived. One special quality of IBA Emscher Park's regional structural programme is its incorporation of art into the early planning process of landscape design. Apparently functionless regions were able to be redefined as locations for art, creating unique environments. Exhausted areas gained unique features and qualities that simultaneously gave significance to the landscape.

Landmark projects in the region rely on this approach by IBA Emscher Park. For example, the 117.5-metre high gasometer in Oberhausen, the spectacular installation from Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was the talk of the nation and has been a sought-after venue for visual and performing arts ever since. Or the sophisticated tetrahedral pyramid  that has become the symbol for a region’s renewed association with its industrial history. It is literally and figuratively a brave departure from an ’underground’ past into a new and bright future.