Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord by Latz + Partner

Landscape Architecture: Latz + Partner
Team Members: Latz + Partner, Latz-Riehl, G. Lipkowsky
Location: Duisburg, Germany
Design year: 1990
Year of construction: 1992 – 2002
Area: 230 hectares
Budget: 15.500.000 EUR

With some 100 projects, the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park (IBA) in the Ruhr District was attempting to set quality building and planning standards for the environmental, economic and social transformation of an old industrialised region. The landscape park Duisburg Nord is one of these projects: The existing patterns and fragments formed by industrial use were taken, developed and re – interpreted with a new syntax, existing fragments were interlaced into a new ”landscape”.

The Piazza Metallica is the symbol of this park, a metamorphosis of the existing hard and rugged industrial structure into a public park.
Iron plates that were once used to cover casting moulds in the pig-iron casting works, form today the heart of the park. From the first moments of their existence, these cast iron plates have been eroded by natural physical processes. In this new place, they will continue to rust and erode.

It was a controversy to create places and public spaces in midst of a blast furnace plant. Today, the fear of pollution and contamination has given way to a calm acknowledgement of the old structures. During festivities up to 50.000 people gather in these places where the flowering trees interweave with the bizarre framework of the blast furnaces and the windheaters to a fantastic image.

So, by degrees, a fresh history and a fresh understanding of the contaminated site and of the landscape art have been developing…

This is the coolest park I’ve ever seen. Every time I pass a huge, old abandoned industrial complex all I want to do is go inside and explore. Now we can!

(more photos of the other areas of the park / via Landezine)