B1|A40 THE BEAUTY OF THE GRAND ROAD

RECONSTRUCTING A LANDSCAPE At first
glance, the district of Dortmund-Schönau does
not embody any sort of problematic, questionable,
or bizarre situation along the A40.
Schönau is like an idyllic village of single-family
homes and mansions. Its locale, in the hilly
area just before the monumental Schnettker
bridge, seems practically luxurious. Now, after
being renovated, the bridge provides enough
protection from the noise of the A40 to give the
town – which, until recently, resembled a large
construction site due to the construction traffic
– a little bit of peace and quiet. In this nearly
village-like idyll, the restored Emscher River
and the Rüppingsbach wind their way past villas,
gardens, and flood-meadows through Schönau,
the Emscher Valley, and beneath the A40.
Along a two-hour hiking trail, B1|A40 questioned
today’s notions of landscape. While some consider
it the epitome of nature, land here has actually
long been a cultivated landscape subject
to the fashions of each era. 1 It articulates an omnipresent
theme in a region with a significant
history of exploiting natural resources – one
that is currently in great need of renewal.
The recently completed restoration of the Emscher
here underscores this. During the postwar
era, the economy demanded progress in
the form of the straightest river possible, where
water, clean or not, would flow as quickly as
possible. This was especially true of the Emscher,
which served as a sewage canal for the
entire region, transporting poisonous industrial
waste to the Rhine. Of course, it’s understandable
that this concept of open waste disposal did
not include the notion of anyone spending much
time around the contaminated waters. The Emscher
was transformed into a ramrod-straight,
high-speed channel. Today, and for thirty years
prior, people have been trying to turn the Emscher
landscape back into what it once was. The
Emscher Park International Architectural Exhibition
(IBA) and its successors certainly do
their best, but every once in a while they convey
an impression of omnipotence. Where humans
have destroyed the landscape, humans
should once again recreate a fertile river that
will meander westward in the future. Here in the
Schnettker Valley, where this future has already
begun, the river actually flows in a curving bed
surrounded by water lilies, cattails, and reeds.
What you no (longer) see is the sewage canal,
which is still there, placed below the restored
river with a great deal of effort. An ambivalent
situation in which landscape is reproduced with
clever technology.
Whether the artful artificiality of this landscape
will have to remain hidden, as it currently is, or
whether the historical facts about it should be
recorded, remains to be seen. The pretense, the
falsification of facts, certainly makes the current
situation easier to live with and should not
be denied. The history of the landscape as a site
of ambivalent developments, however, is disappearing
behind the patina of reconstruction.
On the trail, you encountered various forms of
the reconstruction principle. The path led from
the village to the fork of the Emscher and Rüppingsbach;
beneath the mighty bridge it showed
one of the A40’s striking breaks in the landscape.
Underneath the massive steel structure,
Christian Odzuck’s work of art, Polytopos
Dortmund* employed minimal means to compete
successfully with the bridge. The structure
systematized the view of the valley, as well as
the bridge and the site between the village and
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