jasonsternertravels-blog
Traveling Deutschland
Hello world I am Jason here is my blog. Rutgers University Landscape Architecture.
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Phoenix Lake & more planning talk
13 June 2017
We started the day by heading to Phoenix Lake, a former steelworks site in the district Horde of Dortmund. Our walk around the lake began with a presentation from a classmate about zoning in Germany. Germanyās zoning laws deal with issues relating to industry, relieving crowding, and protecting the countryside. The United States deals with the first two topics, but ignores the protection of our green spaces which is pretty bad considering how problematic Global Warming is becoming. Around us, the developers have most of the power which is problematic especially when it comes to environmental protection.
Anyway, after the talk, we continued to walk around the lake, which was once a toxic wasteland and the city turned it into a man-made lake. The toxic waste was dug up and piled to form a hill, which now serves as a lookout over the lake, beautifully planted. The lake is still acidic from the toxic material in the ground, but is planted and has wildlife within it, and will hopefully one day restore back to a non-toxic area where people might be able to swim and not just be a pretty site. After the construction of the lake, housing was and is still being built all around, catered for more upper class people since the area is now so beautifully landscaped.
To finish the day, we had another meeting with planning workers, this time in the Dortmund City Hall. We heard two people speak on the history of the city, past development projects, and future goals and plans they have. Itās interesting to be learning about all of this since Iāve never known much about zoning and planning. It seems like they have laws here making everything very efficient and well done. Iām realizing the importance of knowing these laws and how they relate to landscape architecture. When I get back to the states Iād like to learn more about how the planning works and what can be done to make more progressive and sustainable moves in the future.
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Landschaftspark!
@ Duisburg-Nord, 12 June, 2017
A meeting we originally had planned was moved to later in the week, so today was a bit of a later start, but still an eventful day visiting a well known park our Sophmore studio class had learned a bit about in a past studio. The park, Landschaftspark, is another post-industrial site that has been revamped. The site contains remains of an old steel factory, surrounded by agricultural fields. Peter Latz, the landscape architect professor from the Technical University in Freising, was the designer of the parks landscape. Latz has a unique way of designing, looking at the landscape in layers, or themes, and really putting an effor to keep old relics, especially in this case. He coined this kind of design asĀ āstructuralit,ā layers creating new meaning. In Landschaftspark, the old factory is supposed to serve as the wild part, while the vegetation & plantings were designed to seem more built. It was super cool to see this park in person after having learned a bit about it, and drawing the plan view of it. The park featured most of the original factory parts that were accessible to clime and look out from, with old rail lines, some still used, jutting through the site. The park also featured a variety of playgrounds, ponds, water features & the Emscher river, as well as rock climbing on walls of old iron ore containers.
This park and all it has to offer, as well as many of the other public spaces weāve visited on this trip, had a lot for our class to learn, think about, and take home with us to share our findings. They successful preserve and celebrate history here, while designing the spaces to be thoroughly enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds. Iām going to miss the adventure-filled playgrounds, where the risk of injury is understood by parents and children. There is a trust system here that we donāt have in the United States, but people donāt try to sue as often, so public spaces can have a bit more risk, resulting in a more enjoyable public space for children and adults alike. The visual aesthetic of these playgrounds is much more enjoyable to look at than the pre-fabbed, plastic playgrounds that we have, all looking the same.. at least to me
Anyways, weāre learning more and more about the laws and regulations of the areas of Germany. They result in more well-built public parks and street scapes containing more green spaces. I hope everyone on the trip brings these ideas and ways of looking and thinking about public spaces home with them, so we can shape the future of our public areas better than we do now.Ā
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A successful product
10 June 2017
After three full workdays, and one more site visit, my two lovely group members and I cranked out a solid design, including a plan, several section cuts and perspectives with some diagrams to go with. It was a short amount of time and we hand drew everything, so we couldnāt get very detailed with our designs, but both our professors and Emscher Genossenschaft seemed very happy with the results.
The main intent of Emscher Genossenschaft was to create bike access between surrounding cities, for the site to serve as a biological hotspot, a place for community to enjoy, and celebrate the engineering achievements through landscape architecture. Our group focused on the history of the site as an agriculture and mining area, and used this concept to design the site according to the wants and needs of the client. We implemented many ways to bring people into the site and enjoy a variety of possible uses as well as learn about the history of the site. A few things we put into the design were a plaza around the cistern/monument as a focal area of the site, spaces cut out of the adjacent wheat meadow for passive recreation, and then spaces along the river for people to fish, launch kayaks, and children to swim. On the other side of the river I designed a replica mining shaft that doubled as a slide for children, which carried them from thirty feet above ground, into an earth mound and letting them out a ways down the river bank.Ā
Overall, every group made an awesome intervention and we were all happy with the results of the design charrette. Last night, the client and CEO of the company took us out to dinner and we had a nice talk with him, but unfortunately he got stuck in traffic on the way to our presentations and had to leave for another obligation. Martina made it, though, and at the end she told us they were originally planning on having a design competition for the site, but instead are likely to implement various ideas from our class. So it looks like Iāll have to make it back out to the area again in the future!
Pics of the project and presentations to come :)
J
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The beginning of a long four days..
06 June 2017
After arriving back last night from a weekend in Amsterdam, weāre back on the move this morning making our way to Dortmund. Another relatively small city just an hour outside of Dusseldorf, weāre setting up camp here for almost two weeks. We quickly unpacked our things and were right off to begin the studio project Wolfram has set up for us in collaboration with a large nearby Landscape Architecture and Engineering firm. We met with Martina, a Landscape Architect from the publicly owned sewage and storm water management company, Emscher Genossenschaft. She gave us a tour of the site weāll be creating design interventions for for the next few days, an area of land located between two smaller cities; Recklinghausen and Castrop-Rauxel. The area has a history of coal mining and agriculture, and Emscher Genossenschaft recently finished a project on the site where they built a bridge to carry a large canal, the Rhein, over the Emscher river. The reason for the construction of these waterways is because the sewage piping in the area was destroyed due to the coal mines. Over time, the mines caused subsidence within the land, creating some areas of land to sink into the ground and ultimately breaking sewage pipes apart. At the time, the way to deal with the sewage was to release it into the Emscher river. Today, the sewage is once again contained in a piping system, but the Emscher is contaminated. So the bridge works to keep the river and canal separate, preventing contamination of the canal. The canal also serves as an important waterway for shipping goods by cargo ship.
In addition to the bridge construction, Emscher also built a huge, 40 meter deep (~120 foot) sewage cistern as well as an underground storage tank. With these new technologies and the river densely planted, the company hopes that the Emscher will be clean enough to swim in again within 7 years. The company hopes the cistern will one day serve as a monument, and our task is to design the surrounding thirty to forty hectares, or around 85 acres. It is now Tuesday night, and we present as groups of three on Saturday at 2PM.. Grind time
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Urban Planning in DĆ¼sseldorf
Thursday 01 June, 2017
Last night we arrived in the city of DĆ¼sseldorf, which has a much different feel than Munich did. The streets are not as clean and the people seem more laid back; some of the city reminds me of Philadelphia, making a few of us feel less out of place. On Thursday morning, we made our way to an Urban Development organization where we listened to a lecture from three different people who each played a different role in the organization. They talked about different levels of urban planning and the laws & regulations in DĆ¼sseldorf and other regions of Germany. One important aspect of how they do things here is that they always keep environmental impact in mind. There are nature impact regulations, requiring any areas of development to be compensated in some way with an ecological balance sheet. Also, there is a lot of government funding for planning projects; most projects get around fifty percent of government funding. There are six different funding programs that distribute 1.1 billion dollars per year to various projects around the country. One last thing that really impressed me is the amount of public participation that urban planners and landscape architects include in projects. This community involvement seems like itās going to be a vital part of the future of urban planning and large scale landscape architecture.
After the meeting, our group toured downtown DĆ¼sseldorf a bit. We made our way to the top of the Rheinturm, a huge television tower that you can take an elevator to the top of. At the top, you can see the city from any angle using windows that hang out over the ground. You can lean on the windows and feel like youāre hanging 800 feet above the ground. We also got to see some buildings designed by Frank Ghery. Iāve always been interested in architecture, so itās awesome to see all the crazy architecture throughout Germany. We ended up in the main shopping district which runs along a canal, or boulevard, that is lined with an allee of huge london plane trees. It was an impressively designed area.
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Freising
Monday 29 May, 2017
On Monday, our group took a short ride outside Munich to a small town called Freising. We began the day with a trip to the Technical Institute where our professor, Wolfram, got his PhD in Landscape Architecture (L.A.) We toured the L.A. building and listened to a lecture about their program there. This is the same department that created the L.A. museum exhibit in Munich. It was great to learn a bit about how they run their program there and what their studios were like. One sweet difference between their studio rooms and the ones we have at Rutgers is how all of the furniture was built to be rearranged however the students desire. This was the idea of Peter Latz, a well-known Landscape Architect who used to run the L.A. program at the school. Also, the students there have always done projects on campus, especially right outside their building. We got to see some of the works they built which were awesome, itād be nice to do this sort of thing more around Blake Hall.
For lunch, we took a break at a local beer garden, where a classmate Alex gave a presentation about the history of beer gardens. Afterwords an old friend of Wolframs gave us a Church and Garden tour. During our walk we learned about the Corbinian Church of Freising. I donāt practice any religion, but its interesting learning about the history of the Churches we visit and their relationship to nature.
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More Parks!
27 May, 2017 On our fifth full day, we saw yet more impressive landscapes and added thousands of steps to our step count.. The day began at Petuel Park, which is a somewhat recently built park acting as a cover for part of a freeway. The freeway was an eyesore and creating noise pollution for the adjacent school and homes. The park, which seemed to stretch a little less than a mile over the freeway, had several little intimate garden spaces for the people of Munich to use. There were also pathways wide enough for folks to bike and run. The park, while causing yet more gentrification for surrounding housing, has many benefits. By adding more green space back into the city the heat island effect is reduced a bit. The park also offers playgrounds for youth, and trails for excersize and travel. Munich has covered up roadways with public spaces in other areas also, and it seems to be a great way to make the city more sustainable and more enjoyable to live in. Next, we walked our way to the Olympia Park area, where the 1972 Olympic Games were held. The park, designed by Landscape Architect Gunther Grzimek, is honestly a jaw dropping display of architecture and green space working together. All of the curves of the hills that were built flow right into the crazy shade structure hanging above buildings that originally held smaller sporting events. The main arena almost resembled the Alps the way it was designed, and across the pond was a hill that looks out at the wild curvilinear park and the rest of the city. That hill actually used to be a pile of rubble after World War II before it was covered with soil and shaped into an impressive rolling landscape. The park was wonderful to visit, studying a place with such complex topography on what used to be a flat site was very cool. To end a long first week, almost all of the students taking the program went together to a Music Festival at a local university. For a school event it was very large and well done, we all enjoyed the music and German beer.
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Messestadt Riem
26 May, 2017 On our fourth day here in Munich we made our way to the Riem district, an area that used to be the international airport of Munich. It is now a place split into three uses, with a commercial area, housing, and a park space for the residents. We got to see all of these areas, which were split into three even sized spaces on rectangular plots of land. The designers worked with the layout of the old airport to form very linear spaces. The place was very impressive, from the crazy playgrounds to the man made swimming hole that was also designed with plants that keep filter the water. While there are issues with gentrification as there are all throughout Munich, the space was designed so well we learned a lot about Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. After visiting Riem, we made our way to a modern art museum in Munich right by one of the universities. The landscape architecture department at the school created the first ever Landscape Architecture exhibit in the museum called Out There. teachers and students from the department did case studies in ten slums across the world, creating solutions for different issues each of the cities had. It was great to listen to one of the professors speak about the projects, especially because our next studio is going to be similar to projects like this. When Professor Keller was finished, she recommended we check out a little cafe at the school, so we got to end the day having drinks on a rooftop looking over the city.
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First evenings dinner, found some yummy veggie options Munich 05.21
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