Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord
The park closely associates itself with the past use of the site: a coal and steel production plant (abandoned in 1985, leaving the area polluted) and the agricultural land it had been prior to the mid 19th century.
Within the main complex, Latz emphasized specific programmatic elements: the concrete bunkers create a space for a series of intimate gardens, old gas tanks have become pools for scuba divers, concrete walls are used by rock climbers, an area of the factory, the middle of the former steel mill, had been made into a piazza.
Memory has re-emerged as an important aspect of design, and has been addressed by authors such as Sebastien Marot, Frances Yates, Robert Smithson, and Peter Latz himself.
Smithson's assertion, in his article "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic," is similar, in that memory recalls the past but in a way that applies it to new things.
A series of pathways at multiple levels connect sites scattered throughout the project, allowing visitors to construct their own experiences.
It is similar to the way Smithson's essay, "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic," incorporates elements of the past to aid in giving meaning to things of the present (Marot, 42).
The sewage canal, which was believed to be in the same location as the ‘Old Emscher’ river, could not remain as it existed on the site, and was placed underground (Diedrich, 73).
Markers made by soil mounds (these also break up the culvert form) allow the depth of the water to be read by the visitor to the site.
Finally, Piazza Metallica also works with ideas of temporality and memory: the landscape architects took 49 steel plates that formerly lined the foundry pits at the site (Diedrich, 70) and installed them to mark a gathering place, intended for events and performances.
However, the steel plates are not meant to last; rather, they will gradually erode and decay, portraying the natural processes occurring in the site (Steinglass, 129).
Peter Latz, takes these ideas and pushes them further as he uses materials on the site to show their transient nature as they change and decompose, transforming into something else.
Latz has worked to do this at Duisburg Nord in many ways (Weilacher, 102) and it has been declared as a highly successful cultural park (Steinglass, 129).
industrial wastelands) form the backbone of urban biodiversity in the central Ruhr Region and are places for experiencing nature and for environmental education.
