Adventures in the Spiral of Life: Germany Part Drei

One of my favorite, and most unique might I add, stops on the trip as a part of our curriculum was a little place called Landschaftspark in a town called Duisburg Nord. Landschaftspark in simple turns is an on steel mill abandoned in 1985 to be left and later converted into a public park. The pure size of the steel mill left your eyes in awe until you walk around and see all the careful thought that went into the conversion process for designer Peter Latz.

The idea for converting the park came from the desire to use the area to understand the regions industrial past and make it usable to the general public. To me, a public policy student, red flags went up as we were being guided around this area of how chock full of legal landmines this place is....I mean wouldn't this be considered a brownfield site or something? How much does it cost to maintain rusting metal? Something like this would never happen in the United States.

But sometimes that is the simple charm of Germany, Germans have the ability to accomplish things that could even be imaginable in the United States for the simple fact of not wanting to waste the space.

So now, Landschaftspark has become a destination park with something for everyone (not to let my public relations background filter into my post, but really......it has something for everyone). If you want to read more about the design aesthetic check out these sites.

And of course...here are some pictures of this awesome place :)

View of the campus

Some of the steel holding tanks are converted into flower beds

Our group

The entrances to the steel melting areas are made to look like an entrance to a secret garden. There were over thirty entrances and every door looked a little bit different and every garden had a different feel.