Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

104
Moving Land: International Building
Exhibition Fürst-Pückler-Land 2000-
2010 in Lower Lusatia
Brigitte Scholz
Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) Fürst-Pückler-
Land GmbH, Seestr. 84-86, 01968 Großräschen,
Germany (e-mail: scholz@iba-see.de)
Abstract
Large-scale planning needs creative processes – this
is the starting point of this article. As an example
for such an innovation tool we want to introduce the
concept of the International Building Exhibition (IBA)
Fürst-Pückler-Land. Based on an informal planning
approach IBA initiates new ways of thinking and
courses of action by means of concrete projects. The
subject of this building exhibition is a post-industrial
peripheral region in the east of Germany – Lusatia.
The region that had been characterised by lignite
mining for decades was forced to develop new
perspectives after the structural break in 1989/90.
Key words
Innovative design strategies, landscape ideas, changing
landscape uses
Introduction
The history of building exhibitions in Germany can be traced
back over a hundred years. They are used to promote
new developments, conduct experiments and translate
visions into constructed realities. The Weißenhofsiedlung,
for example, that was built within the framework of
the building exhibition in Stuttgart (1927), became one of
the most important contemporary witnesses of New Building,
and the IBA in Berlin (1984/87) coined the principles
of the critical reconstruction and gentle modernisation
of the old housing quarters. During the IBA Emscher Park
(1989-1999) the development of an entire old industrial
region was the subject of a building exhibition for the first
time. IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land transfers this approach to a
rural, peripheral region in eastern Germany – Lusatia.
The excavation of lignite began in Lusatia around 150 years
ago. Initially mining was below ground, but later took
place in huge open cast-mines. Briquette factories, power
stations, coking plants and other branches of industry
developed accordingly. The once rural region in eastern
Germany was turned into the coal and energy district
of the German Democratic Republic. A total of seventeen
open-cast mines were in operation there in 1989,
making use of around 2,000 hectares of land per year.
Subsequent to radical political change in 1989/1990, the
majority of the open-cast mines and industrial plants was
shut down abruptly. Today, Vattenfall still operates five
open cast-mines and three power stations in the region.
The redevelopment of the old industrial sites and closed
opencast mines is a state business within the responsibility
of Lausitzer und Mitteldeutschen Bergbauverwaltungsgesellschaft
(LMBV).
Owing to the deindustrialisation, the peripheral
location near the Polish border and a downward demographic
development Lusatia is a shrinking region: With
its around 91 inhabitants per sq.km (on average there
are 231 inhabitants per sq.km in Germany) the area is a
particular resource in this sparsely populated region. In
the German spatial planning this potential can be found
in the concept of “Preserve resources, create cultural
landscapes”. The pure protection of the area shall be replaced
by a resource and product management to create
a scenic diversity. [1]
From 2000 to 2010, the IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land is working
on around two dozen projects as a “Workshop for
new landscapes”. Referring to its name patron Prince
Pückler, the workshop takes up his world-famous works
of landscape gardening in Bad Muskau and Cottbus-
Branitz – as well as Pückler’s creative innovations and
new ideas.
Workshop for New Landscapes
Since 1990, the LMBV has reclaimed almost 100,000
hectares of land – an area larger than the state of Berlin.
This has emerged as one quarter each of reusable water,
agricultural, forestry and conservation areas. The traditional
re-cultivation models strive for a reconstruction of
the landscape typical of Lusatia, resembling the conditions
prior to mining. The IBA expands on this starting
point and aims at creating new landscapes with mining;
landscapes that do not represent a denial of mining.
These projects do not attempt to conceal the artificiality
of the landscape, but to make it into a new hallmark of
the region. The core assignment of this IBA is to develop
the minescape into a landscape with a testimonial value
of the past with design standards of the new century
(Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) Fürst-Pückler-Land
2000).
For this reason the Strategic Commission of IBA developed
a concept with different so-called “landscape
islands”, which were shaped by mining and – in accordance
with their structure and potentials – each has a
distinct character of its own, from industrial culture to
landscape art, to natural landscapes and the water world.
Especially striking are the new areas of water, totalling
around 14,000 hectares, which are being created by
flooding the residual open-cast pits.