Photo: parks and recreation, Landscape Park, North Rhine-Westphalia

5 photos

Landscape Park: Visiting a Factory Like Attending a Celebration

Parks and recreation

Directions

Duisburg-Nord, an unusual landscape park, opened on the territory of the former metallurgical plant in Duisburg in 1991. Now it is one of the most popular leisure areas for locals and tourists. The plant was shut down in 1985, after which the city inherited an industrial area of almost 200 hectares. Curiously enough, primarily environmental activists were against the demolition of the abandoned plant. They took the initiative to open a park on the territory of the plant, not a usual one with green lawns, flower beds and fountains, but one using the existing industrial landscape as its basis.

The central idea of the design of the landscape park was not to get rid of the constructions uglifying the landscape but to reinterpret them, giving new life and reorienting to modern realities. A diving center is now in the former gasometer where divers go down to the bottom and swim among artificial coral reefs, occasionally bumping into the wreckage of ships, cars and aircraft. Performances by contemporary artists and music concerts, gathering thousands of people are held at the place of the old power station. The steel plant is converted into an entertainment center, and an open-air cinema is now working where metal was once being cut. Lovers of climbing and parkour take fancy to concrete walls, while the former blast furnace №5 became an observation deck, which offers magnificent views of Duisburg and the surroundings. Every year the park is visited by about 500 thousand visitors.

Landscape Park: Visiting a Factory Like Attending a Celebration

Restaurants