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Formerly a sewer with sheet-pile walls, the Lanferbach now runs by the Schungelberg estate in a leisurely fashion. |
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Most of the planners from elsewhere had to get used to two things over the ten years of the International Building Exhibition at Emscher Park: first to the stock of language that had emerged in Germany’s melting pot, borrowing all kinds of vocabulary that would otherwise be unfamiliar from the various immigrant groups. And to a kind of person that does not take at lot of things particularly seriously. For example, all the tillefitt, or fuss, about the IBA. Many of these have still not realized that a building exhibition took place in the Ruhr at all, and that countless projects were completed or considered that had a great deal of influence on the local people’s living conditions. It is only when your own front garden has been decontaminated or an almost completely natural stream appears instead of a concrete drainage gutter that even the people who didn’t particularly care – it was all ‘six of one’ or ‘jacket or trousers’, as the German expression has it – that the landscape had taken a turn for the better. It is possible to walk around in it again, to experience it. One project that became known well beyond the boundaries of the Ruhr is in Gelsenkirchen. A Jugendstil estate in front of the giant Rungenberg spoil heap, also known as Mount Slag, was redeveloped and tastefully complemented with slender terraced housing. The Schungelberg housing estate for miners had previously been grey, surrounded by dismal green, and bordered by an open, evil-smelling sewer. After redevelopment the complex felt completely different – also helped by attractive open spaces. These appear in the form of nicely proportioned streets, attractive gardens and above all a park which came into being as part of a new rainwater concept. The Lanferbach had previously been a canalized stream in which contaminated water from the Rungenberg slag heap flowed towards the river Emscher. Today the liquid |
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Before it was redesigned the Lanferbach was forced into a concrete corset and ran through a fenced-off area – ‘Danger – No Entry’ was the order of the day. |
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Overflow of one of the overgrown infiltration swales |
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The steps by the bed of the stream invite people to stay for a while and play. An old brick wall was used for their construction. |
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Site management in the mud of Monte Schlacko |
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