Regenerating the Ruhr - IBA Emscher Park project for the regeneration of Germany's Ruhr region

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 1999 by Ingerid Helsing Almaas

The IBA Emscher Park is a unique project in planning and architectural terms not just because of its 10 year mandate and long-term visions, but also because of its focus on the local organizational structures rather than on simply erecting model buildings. How can any physical redevelopment plan change the vast scale of all that human activity, understood and remembered through the backbreaking work, drilling, shifting, crushing, smelting? How can one change the operations of a whole local culture from the scale of coal and steel to the scale of a future not yet known? Faced with the vast scale of the Ruhr region, and the many uncertainties still attached to its future, the IBA Emscher Park has worked with the scaleless structures of collaboration, altering priorities, encouraging intelligent choices. The main product of this IBA is experience: the people in charge of local developments have been given direct experience of how to achieve the required quality in the individual projects, as well as a possible way to make those projects part of a larger qualitative change. The buildings, with all their innovation, are the physical markers of a new body of local knowledge. INGERID HELSING ALMAAS

The end of the IBA Emscher Park is being marked by several events during the course of 1999. The exhibition Das Finale, presenting the IBA and its projects, opens in Kraftzentrale Meiderich on 24 April. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installation The Wall opens in Gasometer Oberhausen on 30 April. The exhibition Sonne, Mond und Sterne, portraying the natural, cultural and mythological aspects of coal and natural energy, opens 13 May in the old coking plant in Zollverein Essen. The European Planning Biennale is being held in the Innenministerakademie Mont-Cenis in Herne-Sodingen 13-17 September. A full programme of events is available from the press office, IBA Emscher Park Gelsenkirchen, on 49 209 1703 131. The IBA Emscher Park also arranges guided tours of the various projects of the region, for information and booking call 49 209 1703 110.