Granted, this is a rather unusual “Building of the Week” since buildings are not the topic here. Quite the opposite, actually: this is about tearing down the historic city center of Stassfurt in Eastern Germany and putting a small lake and a park in its place.
Stassfurt dates back to the Middle Ages, but remained a tiny village until – during industrialization – the salt-beds underneath the town became tremendously valuable for the emerging chemical industry. Mining companies started to build tunnel after tunnel for systematic exploitation, and the town flourished. Alas, only for a short while. Due to a severe lack of knowledge (and a bit of greed), water entered many of the tunnels, which dissolved the salt and ruined the mining industry, and caused slow but catastrophic sinking. Between the 1880s and the 1960s, some areas of the city sunk by as much as six meters and more than 800 buildings had to be torn down, including the church and city hall. For any city this would cause a severe identity crisis, but in Stassfurt this also added to the economic decline after the end of the “Salt Rush.”
It proved to be very difficult to reach a decision about what could be done with the empty city center. For a long time in Stassfurt there was the dream of reconstruction, while the area remained unstable and therefore dangerous to use. It was also expensive to maintain, as the center had to be continuously drained. In 2005 the city's inhabitants decided to flood the city center, leaving everyone with the question: what makes a city center? Every other city answers this with one word: shopping! But can only a park constitute a city center, too?
The design of Berlin-based landscape architects Häfner/Jimenez combines a recreation area with a memorial. Traces of Stassfurt's history are left visible everywhere, such as the foundation of the church or parts of the former marketplace's pavement. The park is not intended to be an idyll; its layout is rather strict and ordered, an almost urban and an even somewhat brusque place. At the same time it is a reminder of the past and a free space, with manifold program possibilities for the present, like open-air festivals, markets, and meetings.
Maybe a city center doesn't need a dense urban fabric. Maybe an open space can also be the center. And maybe the “Building of the Week” doesn't always need to be a building.
www.haefner-jimenez.de

Blog Building of the Week 25 Oct 2012