Only when the investor is a client, the developer is a local planning director, the buyer an owner, the architect a master builder and the property a house, only when the city authorities understand that building culture is more important than jobs at any price, when residents and employees feel like citizens, feel at home, and stay for a long time, do new buildings emerge that also become cities.
Karl Ganser
Prologue
Building culture needs building clients with culture and architects with ideas, but both are rare. We need to allow the idea pride of place, because without it there would be no building culture.
The Emscher Park Building Exhibition provided a beneficial framework for investors who see themselves as the building clients, for developers who embody the traditional attitude of local planning directors, and for architects, who are the master builders with ideas that endure through time.
Five inimitable ideas that inspired outstanding projects are presented here to illustrate some examples of how building culture can develop:
Landschaftspark Duisburg/Meiderich – Peter Latz (landscape architect)
What do you do with 200 hectares of disused industrial land surrounding the August Thyssen foundation metal works, built in 1900, in the middle of a motorway junction? The city of Duisburg wanted to level it and cover it with greenery. Peter Latz wanted to let everything stand as it was, leaving the site to time and nature. Nature is the best master builder. Art is nature’s neighbour. The architect’s well-placed interventions have enriched nature.
Schüngelber estate Gelsenkirchen, Rolf Keller (urban planner)
In 1916 Wilhelm Johow designed a housing estate for mine workers from Zeche Hugo coalmine in Gelsenkirchen in Garden City style, arranged in concentric circles around a central square. His plan was however only half completed.
Rolf Keller completed the estate, but in a way that nobody expected and that initially, nobody wanted. What could be more obvious than to complete Johow’s concentric plan? Instead, the urban planner arranged the new housing along three dead-straight streets leading from the middle of the estate up to the former mine slagheap. The heap was backfilled at the same time as the new estate and shaped by Keller to fit in with his plans.
Rheinelbe Science Park, Gelsenkirchen, Uwe Kessler (architect)
Not far from Gelsenkirchen‘s central railway station was a former steel foundry and Zech Rheine be coalmine, with a total of 30 hectares of wasteland. Use Kessler drew a 3km line from the station into the open landscape. With a far-sighted vision of the decreasing spatial requirements of a shrinking city, the architect limited the area under construction, bringing the landscape into the city instead. Now the steel foundry‘s old administration building, the new Science Park, a kindergarten, the State Building Academy (Bauakademie des Landes) and some commercial sites are arranged along the new axis.
Nordpolbrücke in the Westpark, Bochum – Jörg Schlaich (engineer)
From 1842, a huge steel foundry was developed on a 70ha site just outside Bochum. After 1968 it gradually closed down. Now it is an unusually beautiful park with its iconic “Century Hall” (“Jahrhunderthalle”), built in 1902 and renovated from 2000 to 2003. The 7km elevated mine railway track that runs from the canal in the north up to the former foundry building has been converted into a bike path. Jörg Schlaich provided the former mine railway track with a landmark at the northern entrance of the park. The path of the bridge swings in an elegant s-curve across the landscape. Two slender pylons point the way to the ‘Jahrhunderthalle’ and the old Water Tower.
The slab (“Bramme”) on Schurenbach slagheap, between Essen and Gelsenkirchen – Richard Serra (sculptor)
Mine slagheaps are not popular, but are tolerated because of the jobs they represent. Years of backfilling have resulted in hills and humps in inconvenient places. Eventually these are pleasingly remodelled and planted, and soon nobody notices them anymore.Schurenbach slagheap, situated between Essen and Gelsenkirchen, did not suffer this fate. Instead, sculptor Richard Serra used it as a plinth for his sculpture “A tree for the Ruhr area” (“Ein Baum für das Ruhrgebiet”). The slagheap was given the simple form of an elongated ridge, into which Richard Serra rammed a mighty steel slab (Bramme). The “ridge” is not planted and the dark stone brought up out of 1,000m-deep shafts is still visible. This landmark marks like no other the area’s transition from the industrial age to a post-modern service economy.
