Building as an art form, as a symbol of modernity and social event. Cityscapes develop and await their revival. The radius grows larger: An entire region is reformed, with landscapes which return a human dimension and face. And new perspectives of the city as a place worth living in and a future metropolis.
The International Building Exhbition (IBA) Fürst-Pückler-Region 2000-2010
Workshop for New Landscapes
Situation
150 years of brown coal mining and its utilization strongly formed the region of the Lower Lausitz. Injured landscapes and abandoned industrial sites remained after the economic developments within the once energetic centre of the former GDR were suddenly stopped by the political change. Seventeen open pits ceased to work from the beginning of the 90s and consequently provoked the question of how to cope with these enormous pits in the future and how to go on, generally.
“Landscape” as Focus
Local planners as well as students developed the idea of an IBA bottom-up –for the region between Großräschen and Senftenberg, in the first place. In 1999 the beginning was set for the IBA Fürst-Pückler-Region with projects spreading through the whole Lower Lausitz. Its funding results from the federal and state program of brown coal reorganization. The name refers to Hermann Prince of Pückler-Muskau who created many praised masterpieces of landscape architecture by his parks in Bad Muskau and Branitz at the beginning of the 19th century.
The IBA gives economic, ecological and creative impulses to these enormous landscape and structural changes: industrial monuments will be conserved and used in new ways, urban renewal projects will be promoted and the moon landscapes of the brown coal mining will be opened to tourism.
The Lausitz becomes the biggest landscape construction site of Europe. The former brown coal area changes into the Lausitz lake region (Lausitzer Seenland): Open pits become Germany´s most extra-ordinary region for water tourism and Europe´s greatest landscape of artificial lakes with its 30 lakes and its 14 thousand hectares of water surface. Half of that is now being connected by navigable canals and hundreds of kilometers of bicycles and skater tracks. Swimming houses become nation-wide attractions.
The mining bridge of residues stands as one milestone project being conserved as an open coalmine for tourists and for artists. The sculptural ensemble of the biological towers of the former coking plant Lauchhammer remains as a memorial and a location for events.
Motivating Individual Solutions
At other locations more tourist points will be developed which will communicate as a whole and reflect the singularity of this artificial lake landscape. In addition to that, the Lausitz Waterworld with its label “swimming architecture” becomes a model of a future service oriented society where new forms of housing and working are experimented within the landscape. Supporting organizations of these developments are special purpose associations and private investors. Hereby, the new Lausitz lake region (Lausitzer Seenland) becomes an economically effective column of the whole region.
