Strategies for Extreme Conditions: The Emscher Park International Building Exhibition

摘要

The 10-year mandate of IBA Emscher was nothing less than to initiate an even grander 20-to 30-year economic and physical reconstruction of a largely contaminated region of the industrial Ruhr region encompassing 17 towns along 70 kilometres of the Emscher River. As an author of the project, Peter Zlonicky describes how by effecting model projects rather than rendering a single master plan, IBA Emscher managed to load the landscape with certain large-scale armatures, such as greenways; certain ways of life, such as 'working in the park'; and certain values and qualities, such as Baukultur, that can shape its future perhaps more effectively than either conventional economic development or policy approaches to brownfields.