Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord

Meidericher Hüttenwerk (a former smelting works) is the central object in Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, designed by landscape architect Peter Latz as a place to harmonise its industrial past and new purpose. The works, commissioned in 1902 and closed as Thyssenwerk in 1985, are a real landmark, featuring three tall blast furnaces. The blast furnaces, built for industrial profitability and functionality, these days, as relics of the past, serve as a romanticised industrial ruin.
Now, however, there is a new type of park on this 200 hectares situated between the Meiderich and Hamborn districts of Duisburg. It combines the wild plants having grown here since 1985 and the smelting works’ industrial buildings. Divers use the former gas tank, now filled with about 20,000m³ of water, for their training and Deutscher Alpenverein (a mountaineering association) expanded a part of the old ore bin into a garden for climbers.
The major feature of the conversion of the old industrial site is the permanent light installation of the English light designer Jonathan Park, which transforms the smelting works into a mysterious and grandiose figure of light and makes it a landmark, a very visible symbol of the landscape park. You can see the three chimneys with their “fitted” neon rings from afar. The neon rings in red, green and blue, the colours of the Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park (construction exhibition), serve as a “signpost”. On site, amidst the steel structures and pipes, visitors will then see a complex, multi-figure “spectre” of light.
The dominating blast furnace scenery aside, the former power house of the smelting works are another major element in this landscape. He hall, 170m in length, 35m in width and 17m in height, is of gigantic dimensions indeed.


For more information, please visit:
Europäisches Gartennetzwerk (eghn.org)

Awards:
Deutscher Landschaftsarchitektur-Preis 2023 (BDLA), Auszeichnung Reifeprüfung – Projekte, 20 Jahre und älter

Author: Editorial baukunst-nrw
Last changed on 02.05.2023

Categories:
Landscape Architecture » Renaturation
Architecture » Public Buildings » Cultural (cinemas, theatres, museums)