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.