The Ruhr Valley was Germany’s industrial powerhouse, and the Duisburg Park occupies a 230-hectare former blast furnace that closed after a long period of decline in 1985. The Duisburg Park was started under the auspices of a regional government programme (the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park) to encourage economic change and urban development as an impetus to the depressed Ruhr area. This programme aided or initiated around 120 projects including housing and landscaping, with an emphasis on ecological, social and cultural concerns within a framework of seedcorn public finance.

At the Duisburg park landscape architects Latz and Partners proposed a slow-burn series of projects aiming to reanimate the park in collaboration with local residents, and allowing the process to develop as funding was found rather than requiring large initial expenditure. The approach was to use and transform the existing industrial landscape and respect its scale and form, recycling its elements and finding new uses to complement the ‘found’ spaces of the steelworks. The history of the area was to be celebrated rather than forgotten, enabling the area to regenerate itself slowly and gently without a radical break from its past, which the residents did not want to see discarded.

Reanimations include:

• a scuba diving school in a gasometer.
• rock climbing in concrete bunkers.
• the purification of a sewage channel into an ecological canal feeding water gardens, powered by a wind power installation in the mill tower.
• a large piazza for concerts and festivals, paved with iron plates once used in casting.
• a cycle path and promenade along the elevated railway that used to deliver coal and ore to the furnace.
• meditative walled gardens within former silos.

Plant and tree varieties were chosen for their liking for contaminated soil, naturally aiding the purification process. The industrial remains are seen as craggy mountains to be re-colonised by plants in a gentle and energy-efficient method of decontamination, although the most toxic soil had to be sealed and buried in the more conventional way.

Realisation of the project involved many local groups including employment schemes for the long-term unemployed. Parts of the park are still being completed. One of its successes has been its adoption by local societies for their activities, such as for the German Alpine Club and scuba diving. Collaborations also continue to take place with artists and local galleries for sound and light installations and other interventions.

The incremental and organic approach of Latz and Partners stands in contrast to the more common process of a large landmark project which is expected to catalyse change around it. By planning for a long timescale, the ecological colonisation of the park through planting becomes a viable remediation technique for less contaminated areas of the park. The gradual discovery, rather than imposition, of viable new uses for the disused industrial spaces becomes possible. The programme of uses and events for the park also demonstrates an unusual approach to programming such a large area, by treating the different sectors as individual entities rather than requiring they conform to an overarching programmatic order. This has enabled increased ownership and independence of the organisations such as the Alpine Club that manage different areas of the park. It has lead to a more self-sustaining process of management and natural evolution of function.

www.landschaftspark.de
www.latzundpartner.de