EMSCHER PARK - RUHR VALLEY GERMANY

Rid your mind of Emscher Park as a "park" in the traditional sense of the word. How can 800 square kilometers of industrial land bound by two shallow rivers ever be considered one single park? It was this mental barrier that perpetuated my complete ignorance of the development concept well into my stay in Essen. Online, I could find information regarding Zolverein, Landschafts Park and the Oberhausen Gasometer, but they were all in different areas of the Ruhr. So, I kept asking myself, so where is "Emscher Park"? The Ruhr is the park. A 1999 article in Architectural Review called the area

"...one enormous tract of developed land: a dense fabric of coal mines and steel works, factories blending into housing and small commercial centres, criss-crossed by autobahns, railways and sewage channels..."

In reality the Emscher river is the spine to a serpentine network of industrial areas rejuvenated by beautiful landscaping, dozens of bridge crossings and adaptative reuse of bold, functionalist, industrial structures of the area's coal mining legacy.

The area bound by the Ruhr river to the south and the Emscher river to the north is referred to as "The Ruhr". The rivers converge at the Rhine on the eastern boundary of the area in Duisburg. A cluster of 17 different municipalities (Duisburg, Oberhausen, Mulheim, Essen, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen and others) are networked by a common public transportation and local rail system. It has the infrastructure to operate like a large metropolis of these smaller cities. The seed that gave birth to this once great industrial region lies in the abandoned coal mines 2 kilometers below the surface. Industrial decline of the late 20th century affected the Ruhr area in a serious way leaving social and environmental scars. In 1989 the development association IBA Emscher Park was formed with the directive of revitalizing the region focusing on restoration of existing buildings and the contaminated water and land in the area. The resulting list of development projects under the IBA comprises what is now marketed as "Emscher Park".

View of the Emscher from the roof of the Gasometer

The IBA expired in 1999 and a successor plan called "Project Ruhr" took over development with a focus on cleaning up the Emscher River and changing the public perception of the area. The projects are categorized as cultural, outdoor or entertainment hot spots along the river. The project culminated in the 2010 EU designation of Essen as the "European Capital of Culture." This status launched a year long calendar of events drawing attention to the culture and activity within the area now housed in restored industrial buildings. The projects have become tourist attractions broadcast over this vast area like a virtual amusement park. Five visitor centers serve as gateways to a park themed not on cartoon characters or Legos, but the region's rich industrial heritage.

Zollverein
If you visit the area and have time to see only one site, make it Zollverein. You should not miss the acres of jaw dropping mega-structures playfully incorporating museums, shops, offices, artists studios, restaurants and a swimming pool. Guided tours are offered through the mining operations by the men who used to work them. The structures designed by the architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer were built between 1928 and 1932. There are twenty buildings on the site, some of them completely empty. These beautifully designed buildings are the true museum pieces that helped Zollverein earn an UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

This is a functioning Ferris wheel! It gives visitors a view inside the coking plant, giant ovens that baked the moisture out of the coal after it had been washed. The structure is over 600 feet long.

The rail lines that stitch buildings together have been converted to a delicately landscaped cluster of walking paths and sculptures. You can spend hours there and not see the entire site. I couldn't possibly take pictures of all of it, but I did post more in the online album. New buildings on the site take cues from the simple forms. The recently completed Zollverein School of Management building by Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA is a giant cube perforated by square openings. It is a perfect fit on this site.

Gasometer, Oberhausen

Steps from the tram stop, I walked into the Ruhr visitor center in Oberhausen where I navigated their cool interactive digital map and located myself in the center of a new retail/commercial district opposite the Stadium and only 500 meters from the entrance to the Gasometer. I bought my ticket to the Magic Places exhibit and made the short trek to the front door. Standing inside this 60 meter diameter, 117 meters high structure has a peculiar disorienting affect.

Couple that with cinematic lighting and it's hard to not feel like an extra on the set of a "Close Encounters" sequel. The tree sculpture at the center in this image is 40 meters high. The elevator climb to the top inspires vertigo about the time you reach the tree top, and I still had 77 meters to go!

view of the tree canopy and exhibit below

Permanent mural photo exhibit of Oberhausen in its industrial heyday

Inside the lower two levels of the Gasometer house a cafe and rotating exhibits.
Nordstern Park

This park is aligned along the canals of the Emscher River that were the conduit for the materials going in and coming out of the Nordstern Coal Mine. Tours of the coal mines, an entertainment venue and playgrounds are focused on bringing families out to play in the yards surrounding the shells of a bygone industrial era.

The Nordstern coke plant has been converted to an office building and sits amid other office buildings and a parking structure as the corner stone of an office park.

The breadth of each development project is almost too much for one person to digest in a day, much less the entire length of all Emscher Park. They are connected by a regional bike and hike trail and are also part of an Industrial Heritage Cultural tour. To see them all would take serious devotion and time. One park that I didn't get a chance to visit that appears to be an equally spectacular place is Landschafts Park in Duisburg, designed by the German landscape architects Latz + Partners. The 50 acres of defunct steel refinery have been turned into an all ages playground. Rock climbers scramble up the battered concrete walls, tourists walk hundreds of meters of elevated catwalks and here, scuba divers (not art) fill the gasometer structure. There's something for everyone in Landschafts Park.
Leaders in Germany considered difficult options for the Ruhr's future. Compare the results today to the alternative of planning, demolishing and building new structures and the wisdom of their choices is clear. Twenty years after it's start, the area has embraced their industrial past and replaced the contaminated soils and unemployment lines with a growing tourism industry, hundreds of acres of recreational area and a host of cultural upgrades.

Thanks to sustainablecities.dk for providing sources and reference information about the area.

DRAGON TATOOS, NOODLE BOWLS AND THE GASOMETER

Walking through the narrow streets of Gamla Stan at night brings to mind movies of cold war espionage woven in with a steamy affair between international spies. Along Götgatan or Folkungatan in Södermalm you are more likely to find eclectic shops and restaurants sporting tattooed and pierced likenesses of Lisbeth Salander. The differences between the two areas highlight the physical disconnection between the two areas. 
Stockholm hopes to better knit the character of these two areas with their SLUSSEN design competition.Between Old Town (Gamla stan), and Södermalm to the south lies a dreadful concrete noodle bowl of traffic arterial roads, train tracks, a boat locks and a city bus terminal. Somewhere in this rats nest a pedestrian is to navigate a path across the river between these popular destinations. The competition attracted big names in design; the likes of Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, BIG and - Sweden's own - Carl Nyrén and Wingårdhs. Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote a tight editorial for the NY Times about the competition entries. He was surely disappointed to learn that Stockholm recently selected Norman Foster's team as the winning entry. 

Here is the link to images of the other entries and worldarchitecture.com's decidedly softer editorial by comparison. The traffic revisions at Slussen together with a revised underground bypass motor way around the city center (currently under construction) will prevent the city center from suffering a traffic embolism in the coming decades. 
This competition is one of three major projects Stockholm has planned with their Vision 2030 document. This is their counter offensive to an even greater challenge of six digit population growth. Population today is 840,000 people. By 2030 it is projected they will have one million inhabitants.A cornerstone of their solution to housing this new population growth is the Stockholm Royal Seaport. Here the city aims to improve on their sustainable design success in Hamarby Sjöstad and build a zero carbon development by 2030 with homes for 10,000 and offices for 30,000. 

STOCKHOLM ROYAL SEAPORT – 

Herzog & de Meuron designed the Oscar properties site using the existing masonry gasometer structures and replacing one of the three with a 47 story cylindrical residential tower. 

Plans by AIX Architects working with the City of Stockholm suggest the gasometer can be reused and converted to a public theater.

Two projects were designed by Wingårdhs, the SKB and Folkhem residential buildings. Master planning for the development was completed by the City Planning Administration.
Plans for a development in this area of the city go back to City Master Plans from 100 years ago. The1999 Master Plan initiated formal planning for the shipping and ferry ports in the northeast part of Stockholm. The detailed planning started in 2000 with Council approval of the plan in 2003 and an updated master plan in 2009. The first phase is under construction and includes 680 residential units and 10 developer/builder/design teams.

Construction phasing of Stockholm Royal Seaport around Hjorthagen

Spearheading the project are the City of Stockholm Planning and Development departments. Together with City Hall, The Stockholm Seaport Innovation and (a local university) the Royal Institute of Technology they make up the municipal development team. The city owns the 236 hectares (583 acres) of land and auctioned off the first set of parcels (numbers 1, 2 and 3 above) in 2010. Developers assembled construction and design teams and bought sites. The city invited successful bidders to a preliminary environmental brainstorming session. Building on a recommended environmental profile from the city, the teams generated ideas that formed an aggressive, but achievable, environmental profile that will be used as a project wide standard through the remainder of the project. 

There are currently 400 businesses and 2000 residents living on the site in the Hjorthagen and port areas. So there has been considerable community involvement in the design process via public comment periods over the past year. A key resolution of the Vision 2030 document places an emphasis on improving the business climate and building the “work city” program. Three significant changes to the port address this effort; 1] moving the primary shipping terminal to Nynäshamn (south of the city), 2] upgrading the existing cruise and ferry terminals and 3] phasing out the oil port in the southern pier of the development, Loudden. These changes use the most successful and vibrant port activities that support commercial development. Moving shipping operations creates both an opportunity to upgrade port infrastructure and to make valuable commercial property available for for development.
Based partially on the ambitious sustainability goals set for the project, in 2009 the Royal Seaport site was designated as one of 18 projects worldwide to be supported by the Climate Positive Development Program a joint initiative between the Clinton Climate Initiative and the US Green Building Council. 

This profile sets an energy consumption target of 55 KwH per m2 per year or about 50% of the current Swedish average rate of consumption. Three environmental targets form the project directive:

• By 2020 CO2 emissions less than 1.5 tonnes/person. Swedish avg is 4.5 tonnes/person.
• Adapt to future climate change.
• By 2030 Seaport will be fossil fuel free. This compares to a 2050 target for all of Stockholm to be fossil fuel free.

Focus areas to achieve these targets include energy, transportation, lifestyle, eco-cycle and climate adaptation. Current designs include a bio-fuel fired combined power/heating plant, an energy smart grid, vacuum tube waste collection services, bio-fueled public transportation and a cadre of low carbon, low energy building solutions. Couple these with the port, roadway and Tvarbanan (metro light rail) upgrades planned for the area and it is clear that Stockholm is serious about meeting these targets. The site is already easily accessible from the city center and it is surrounded on two sides by nature reserves of several hundred acres. This is an area where people will want to live. 

The Royal Seaport information is compiled from data on the project web site and a meeting with Daniel Carlson-Mård, the city of Stockholm Development Administration Project Officer.