Zollverein Park Outdoor facilities for the Zollverein World Heritage Mine and Coking Plant in Essen

"There are landscapes that have been forgotten. They are left somewhere, nobody cares about them. They can be found everywhere; out in the countryside and in the cities. They are forgotten no man's lands. The life of animals and plants here remains rather hidden. "Normal people" are seldom to be found; perhaps a few children and teenagers who make a break for it from the sheltered home. And a few, let's call them "whimsical insiders", who regard these forgotten landscapes like unearthed treasures.
The area of the settling ponds of the former Zollverein colliery, today's "Sculpture Forest", is such a landscape: remote, difficult to reach, walled in and secured with fences. For the "whimsical insider" it is a park, a multifaceted open space in the immediate vicinity of an extraordinary industrial monument. A park with sparse woods, dark shrubbery, water features, and open, wide spaces that reveal views from tree-shaded paths.
The park has evolved over the course of a few years in the midst of collieries and coking plants, almost on its own. Granted: Excavator drivers dredged coal slurry ponds, embankments were leveled and dumps dumped; pipelines were laid, steel lattice towers installed, cooling towers erected and chimneys bricked up, railroad embankments poured and tracks laid. Landscape architects with their columns of gardeners were not there. Nevertheless - or because of that? - everything is so magnificent and also so alien."

This was our view of the Zollverein Park in 1994, when the Zollverein Park did not yet exist, but when work began on unearthing the treasure. The park was made accessible. You could now walk through it on narrow paths. Familiar elements - bridges, stairs, paths - now led to some sculptures and opened up new landscapes. Ulrich Rückriem placed archaic granite sculptures in special situations. Indications of particularly exciting landscapes. The no man's land was allowed to be entered, its visitors turned it into a park.

In the wake of this first intervention, the area of the Zollverein colliery and coking plant took on a rapid development. Halls were redeveloped, new life moved in, master plans were drawn up, ideas developed, funds made available. Zollverein became a World Heritage Site and a symbol of structural change in the Ruhr region.
The concept with which we entered the realization competition for Zollverein Park in 2005 combines these two views of the park: the careful accentuation of the existing characteristics and qualities of a forgotten landscape and the necessary provision of new, multifaceted and robust infrastructures for new activities at Zollverein.

Our approach to Zollverein is based on a number of principles: Emphasis on the architectural ensemble, restraint in the landscape architecture, reduction of elements
and materials, respect for the existing, preservation of the industrial origin, appropriation of the space by the visitors, making the transformation from a hermetically sealed industrial site to a public tourist highlight visible and tangible. The Zollverein Park, which has developed on industrially shaped terrain and which does not deny its origins through careful addition and arrangement, obtains its unique selling point through the contrasting interplay between the clear, simple forms and structures of the industrial architecture and the diversity of the spontaneous vegetation. The form and external appearance of the park is developed through planned and continuous maintenance.

The long-term concept of development through maintenance is accompanied by the gradual realisation of the building blocks of the park. Thus, over a comparatively long period of time, a park is created that formulates a place ready for appropriation from the forbidden zone. It is not a matter of establishing a museum-like industrial landscape; the concept composes a landscape space from the already existing elements, consciously and credibly incorporating historical and current developments and signs, and offering a surface and space for future developments and uses. These are open to multiple interpretations and offer a pragmatic dysfunctionality.