Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord is a beautiful industrial park in West Germany. For over a century, the steel industry left its print in Germany, however, now this beautiful 230-hectare park shows how nature can still thrive in this man-made areas
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foreign [Music] welcome to the Rural Valley in West Germany where 25 years ago the duisburg Nord landshafts park or landscape Park was created it is an astonishing reconciliation between nature and Industry [Music] for over a century the steel industry left its mark on the landscape of the Brewer and as a result it is dotted with Chimneys in the suburb of duisburg one giant steel factory is still standing it is hardly the most obvious location for a park and yet at the foot of this blast furnace on wastelands surrounded by motorways stands one of the most surprising developments of the end of the 20th century spread over 230 hectares railway lines Rusty machinery and an entanglement of pipes form a vast landscape which we are about to explore with the members of our German Green Team Ralph Winkles the parks director Axel film an expert in industrial Heritage Peter kale a botanist Kirsten valter a garden historian Egbert bodman the Park’s technical director Peter Latz its landscape architect and his wife Anna Lisa [Applause] the Revolutionary concept of this park was developed in the 1990s by landscape architect Peter Latz with the rehabilitation of this place he became a big name in the world of landscape architecture and his development has served as an example across continents today this park is seen as a benchmark for the recycling of post-industrial sites [Applause] the era was marked by an attempt to integrate ecological principles into society especially through recycling remember we were asking ourselves what is sustainable what can we take with us for the next 100 years we started by trying to organize everything but we soon had to acknowledge that that was counterproductive it’s pointless trying to create order out of chaos you just need to make it comprehensible and accessible to the public we didn’t drop any plans for the overall site to begin with that would have been an affront foreign that we drew up laterally is just as chaotic as the reality or the place Peter Latz was fascinated by the extraordinary architecture of the site making sense of it was key to developing his project over A Century Of Steel making had produced this improbable landscape the impact is as powerful as the factory once was its Rusty ruins now symbolizing the decline of heavy industry [Music] Axel furl is a former UNESCO expert specializing in industrial Heritage he was involved in the surprising transformation of the region we find him on the blast furnace which has been turned into an observation platform without doubt the craziest to have ever existed [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] our idea was that this should remain a place where you could see how steel production once so typical of the rura valley functions back in the day and this site was very complete we were asked is this a monument that was in 1988 and we replied that it was the whole of the mighty smelting works is a monument we felt that this site was so spectacular that you had to be able to climb on it everyone should be able to climb on it but we had a real battle on our hands we were told no that’s not possible it’s too dangerous today you can climb on it 24 7 all year round foreign [Music] Germany was producing more steel than anywhere in Europe the capacity was huge so we needed these massive plants and they all needed to be interlinked so that water and gas could be transported from one to the other you see these enormous pipes crisscrossing the landscape of the royal Valley that’s very typical of the heavy industry of the era three Peter Latz invented a new aesthetic without destroying these huge industrial buildings on the contrary he integrated them and reinterpreted them applying a logic of recycling in these former coal bunkers a concrete saw was needed to cut passageways through the walls which are two to three meters thick today tunnels and walkways link the various parts of this Labyrinth sign hole and provide access to Gardens blessed with microclimates I think we’re surrounded by Hoppers which were vast containers used to store the iron ore and coal used for production corks all this was built in 1927. here we can see the tunnel where the trucks were loaded up on the engineers wanted to carry on using gravity to load up the materials so there is still one platform situated 8 to 12 meters above ground level what’s the other one is lower down [Music] Dr Kirsten valter is a garden historian in her research she has made the link between this Ultra contemporary Park an 18th century English Gardens my thesis was on English style Gardens and the theory of the picturesque [Music] it was always Peter latz’s intention for parallels to be drawn between this new park and historic Gardens through his two ocean Parks now when we are in English in an English star Garden the ruins are artificial they are built to be noticed all with the aim of creating a certain atmosphere of recalling the architecture of the past and the history of mankind the ruins are real [Music] [Music] I’d say this park was a landmark in the history of landscape architecture it paved the way for other Parks the Highline Park in New York would never have seen the light of day without the duisburg Nord landshafts park it was here that new approaches were tested and developed is [Music] my favorite area is the gardens planted in the cinta bunkers I like the smaller Dimensions which are more in keeping with those of a domestic Garden I like that these are tranquil places where you can get away from the hustle and bustle and spend time alone these 12 meter high containers were filled with the help of a crane they used to store lime iron ore coal or even Ash some containers were filled in and today they have Gardens on their roofs others had doors and windows cut into them to create haughty conclusi these Gardens are like Secret Gardens that you can enter they are perfect haughty conclusive were Italian Gardens from the Renaissance Era which were walled so that no one could see inside them the dimensions of these Gardens are practically identical that’s why they’re laid out like this it isn’t just the ground that is green the walls are green as well you can see green at eye level that’s the beauty of these Gardens again [Music] foreign shows us around the various sections of the park he is accompanied by his wife and Elisa who is also a landscape architect she has worked alongside him since the start of the project these old paving stones are beautiful yeah yes these are all that remain of a freight station which was taken out of service in the 1930s these are the original paving stones there’s nothing new about them they’ve been left as they were [Music] please the site includes a vast network of railway tracks which is the result of a hundred years of engineering today the long paths through the park follow the same route as these former railway lines [Music] we had to find a way to integrate the railway tracks so we had to learn to get around as a locomotive would have done this was not the habitual way of marking out paths so just like when you’re on a bicycle you can’t suddenly turn left or right you have to walk in a wide Arc to change direction and that is what makes the park seem bigger than it really is in here and you can see here and there that it is never ending absolutely but it is a totally straight line three kilometers long it is one of the most important orientation lines on the site because it crosses the whole park and is used daily by cyclists we have the railway track which was used to bring materials in and out of the factory [Music] Pioneer plants they were the first to grow when nothing else had survived many of the seeds arrived like stowaways on freight trains carrying iron ore or else they escaped from nearby allotments in the 1980s studies listed about 300 species some of them exotic such as budlia which is an Asian shrub and the plant most commonly found on railway lines [Music] Peter Latz takes us to a part of the park which has been deliberately left untouched since 1991 as an experiment it’s through here 25 years later Nature has reasserted itself reclaiming the site the vegetation has created a new ecosystem a swamp that looks wild and impenetrable when Peter Latz and his team discovered this site in 1991 lots of areas were polluted they had a real ecological disaster to overcome some of the more contaminated areas were cleaned up and the chemical substances were deposited in former mines where they could no longer cause any damage after 100 years of intensive coal mining the mine shafts have now been filled in a mutant vegetation has sprung up where it seemed impossible to grow anything one of the fascinating things about this park is this strange landscape which captivates botanists we are in the mining area of the park this used to be a mine when you look at the soil here you see that it is composed mainly of residue from mining activity it’s been transformed by human intervention [Music] it’s not a square meter of natural soil in this area in the height of Summer these black substrates can reach a temperature of over 60 degrees only certain plant species can colonize this soil in this Pioneer phase [Music] it’s a plant which originally came from the Mediterranean Basin who came here of its own accord we didn’t plant it it just sprang up now it’s colonizing other dry sites like this one the scientific name for this is Sedum ARCA it’s from the stone crop family this plant can store water in its leaves and thus survive perfectly well in dry periods of the year you also find lots of Birches that’s due to the fact that they’re pollinated by air seeds are scattered by the wind so you often find Birches on this type of site where they have room to multiply much is our pioneer species they grow in the forests around here on very chalky soils so they’re perfectly adapted to the site [Music] foreign [Music] that’s fantastic the roses are already in bloom the farmers here Don’t Spray their crops that’s why they’re obese on the east edge of the park the industrial infrastructures are replaced by organic Farmland the idea was to take Walkers across an agricultural landscape you can see where the natural vegetation of the industrial site ends and the crops begin the Farmland is divided into fields this Farm has always been here it is called today it is used for social purposes thank you a park without water isn’t a park from the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment each period has experimented with water in its Gardens however in duisburg there was no clean water the MSHA river which crossed the site received Wastewater for over a century and had essentially become an open-air sewer at first it was a real headache getting water we couldn’t find a single drop of clean water on the whole 230 hectar site we absolutely had to find water one idea was to collect rainwater on the roofs of the buildings to feed the river the water that circulates around the park has reclaimed certain disused installations such as these cooling tanks badly polluted with arsenic they have now been washed and today they are filled with clear water [Music] so here here is everything is 100 clean the diameter of that windmill is 16 meters it is very powerful and turns an Archimedes screw which takes the water up to a higher level from there with the help of gravity it is transported around the park then finally the water flows back into the canal enriched with oxygen [Music] oh [Music] one man who has his work cut out in the park is Egbert bodman he is the technical director he oversees the upkeep of the site in over that it’s standing here in these blast furnaces there is always repair work to be done rust is a feature of the park but with that comes the obvious drawback did you have to keep checking that the structures meet health and safety regulations the rust attacks these structures this is furnace number one and behind us you can see the reinforcement work done to the furnace where pig iron was extracted today this structure has been given an entirely different use you can see seats being set up for a religious ceremony for Whit Sunday [Music] in what makes this park so unusual is its biodiversity that’s quite significant we have numerous rare plant species which are listed as being threatened with Extinction it is important to protect them by putting in place a specific system of Management’s team um what you see here is defoliation damage caused by box tree moths they are a species of moth which make their cocoons in this Garden the caterpillars are responsible for this defoliation which leads to the death of the plant we’re going to have to dig up the whole pot and replant it is [Music] [Music] in the park the emphasis is placed on sport Leisure and relaxation and young people see the sight as a giant playground on this playground the gasometer hasn’t contained gas since 1996. considerable work was done to it and it was cleaned out to get rid of any rust and residue it is 45 meters wide and 13 meters deep and has become the largest indoor diving pool in Europe [Applause] [Music] first the part wasn’t well received especially in the Raw Valley he had a bad reputation it’s taken time for people to come around we had a mammoth task on our hands we got there in there [Music] these past few days we’ve had to repair and rebuild this windmill now all this needs to be fixed so that the rotor can turn in the wind again this structure has become an important landmark of the past because you can see it from miles around the windmill is also the subject of hundreds of thousands of photographs taken here [Music] we are now taken to a place that has remained hidden in the undergrowth for many years the locals use the pipes that surrounded this space to create the Contours of this Garden showing how integrated the surrounding factories have been with the gardens people call this plant jasmine because it is so fragrant but it is not Jasmine it is a philadelphus that proved to us that there had been a garden here as we’re here for what we wanted to do here was something quite different we wanted to bring together a collection of substratas Earth and other materials present on the site to test them and see how they interacted with the vegetation again as you can see the ferns are growing very well that means that the soil is quite acidic we didn’t say to ourselves we’re going to create something extraordinary we said to ourselves we’re going to create something very simple when you have enough that is ordinary achieving the extraordinary is only a matter of time if you start by designing something extraordinary you are already at the end you can’t add to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you
1 Comment
What an incredible achievement! 😮