Industrial Culture

Industrial Culture
Industrial Culture

Video: Industrial Culture

Video: Industrial Culture
Video: Ruhr Valley - Industrial culture in 5 minutes 🙂 Explore Ruhr Area with its blast furnaces & more 2024, March
Anonim

"Tiger and Turtle"

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The permanent installation "Tiger and Turtle" is part of an ambitious state project to transform the industrial past of the entire land of North Rhine-Westphalia into a cultural and tourist route, which is being implemented progressively, since there is no shortage of interesting objects: this area has long been one of the leading industrial regions of Europe …

«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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"Tiger and Turtle" by German artists Ulrich Gentz and Heike Mutter looks like a roller coaster and is located on a hilltop in Anger Park. People come to the installation even in the worst weather. Visiting it is free, and besides, it is good for your health: the ascent to it is quite steep and requires some effort. The name of this structure, as the authors explain, is about the difference in speeds: a roller coaster is strongly associated with high speed, which is typical for a tiger, but the visitor to the installation will most likely have to climb its steps carefully and slowly, almost at a snail's speed. Cautious Germans preventively closed access to the "dead" loops, which can only be admired from the side, while all other parts of the "Tiger and Turtle" are open even at night.

«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
«Тигр и черепаха» © Елизавета Клепанова
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The dimensions of the installation are 44 by 37 meters, and the height is 21 meters. This is one of the largest such works of art in Germany. For the implementation of "Tiger and Turtle" was spent 2 million euros from the state budget. The country annually allocates a lot of funds for the implementation of such cultural projects in public places - public art - but this often leads to the appearance of tasteless and expensive works, against which residents then actively protest, rightly indignant at such a waste of taxes paid by them. And "Tiger and Turtle", on the contrary, turned out to be a very successful "investment": it is very popular among visitors to the city, while locals come there with sandwiches to relax and enjoy the views of the surroundings.

«Бесконечная лестница» (Umschreibung) Олафура Элиассона в Мюнхене © Елизавета Клепанова
«Бесконечная лестница» (Umschreibung) Олафура Элиассона в Мюнхене © Елизавета Клепанова
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It is worth mentioning that this installation resembles the endless staircase of Olafur Eliasson, realized several years earlier for the Munich branch of KPMG - also as part of the program of saturating the city with works of art, albeit with funds from private companies. Therefore, most of these acquisitions, as a result, are hidden in the courtyards of the headquarters of these firms, and you can visit these objects only by appointment. In Germany, even guidebooks and documentaries began to be published about the routes along such "secret" works.

«Бесконечная лестница» (Umschreibung) Олафура Элиассона в Мюнхене © Елизавета Клепанова
«Бесконечная лестница» (Umschreibung) Олафура Элиассона в Мюнхене © Елизавета Клепанова
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«Бесконечная лестница» (Umschreibung) Олафура Элиассона в Мюнхене © Елизавета Клепанова
«Бесконечная лестница» (Umschreibung) Олафура Элиассона в Мюнхене © Елизавета Клепанова
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But, despite the significantly less popularity and fame of Eliasson's installation due to its disadvantageous location in the courtyard of the office complex, many connoisseurs of contemporary art also come to it.

From grain to contemporary art. Küppersmülle Museum

Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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In the inner harbor of Duisburg, according to the project of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the historic mill with the adjacent grain elevator cylinders was converted into

Museum of Contemporary Art Kuppersmülle. The Swiss architects did not make any fundamental changes to the existing volume: the interior is deliberately simple - with white walls and gray Turkish basalt on the floor. For works of art, this is not at all bad: they look very advantageous against such a neutral background, but focusing on other projects of the famous architectural duo, you still expect something more. The original windows on the walls of the exhibition halls are neatly laid with bricks, as similar as possible to the historical ones; only in some places new narrow window openings have been made, from where the view of the harbor opens. You also experience contradictory feelings due to the lack of a lobby: at the entrance there is only a tiny counter with books and a cash register, passing by which, right in your outer clothes, you immediately get to paintings and sculptures. Vigilant museum staff nevertheless remind them to leave things in the wardrobe and point to a small corridor leading to a room with hangers - about the size of five standard storerooms in Soviet apartments. From this modest space you can get to the bathrooms and the restaurant.

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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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A completely different impression is formed when you walk into a new volume added by architects to the old building, where an elevator and a stunningly spectacular monolithic concrete staircase are located. Made in copper-terracotta shades, this volume attracts numerous visitors to the museum, who, having quickly run through the halls, spend most of their time here, touching the uneven surface of the stairs, as if sculpted by hand, and taking pictures in front of it. Soft light penetrates here through long vertical windows, in which the interior begins to sparkle and shine. There is no need to read between the lines here: finally, Herzog and de Meuron's handwriting is visible to the naked eye. Only a standard elevator returns to reality from a completely fabulous interior, which would look more advantageous with finishing not with steel, but with copper or golden panels.

Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
Музей Кюпперсмюле © Елизавета Клепанова
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For many years, there has been talk of expanding the museum, and Herzog and de Meuron have long ago presented sketches

a new body in the form of a large rectangular glass volume above the elevator cylinders, but this idea has not yet been implemented. However, the official website of Küppersmülle says that in 2018 the project of the Swiss architects will still be implemented.

Plant-park Duisburg-Nord

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The steel plant "Maiderich" in Duisburg finished its work in 1985: then 200 hectares of deeply polluted soil with massive workshops passed into the possession of the city. The authorities decided that it would be nice to restore the quality of the land, while at the same time increasing the environmental indicators in the region as a whole, and held a closed competition for a park project on the territory of the former industrial zone. The victory was won by the German company Latz + Partner, which offered to preserve the steel plant for future generations, to find a new application for all its industrial structures, to eliminate soil contamination using phyto-treatment, and to use the canal with earlier wastewater for permanent cleaning of the site. Peter Latz, head of the Latz + Partner workshop, wishing to preserve the memory of the place as much as possible, cited a situation as an example: a grandfather, who had worked at the enterprise all his life, could bring his little grandchildren to the park and explain to them what these or those machines were intended for, and how they were used in production.

Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
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Visitors

Park Duisburg-Nord can use any of its facilities free of charge, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. With minimal financial investments, industrial buildings turned into a concert hall, a museum, and so on. Old gas tank containers have been converted into a scuba diving pool, concrete bunkers have framed a series of small gardens, concrete walls are used for rock climbing, and one of the central locations of the former industrial complex has been converted into a kind of fairground for various exciting outdoor events. To view the park from a height, it is enough to walk to blast furnace No. 5, where there is an observation deck with a view - and after all, not so long ago, ore was melted here at a temperature of 2000 degrees Celsius to produce pig iron.

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If you want to learn how to walk a tightrope or attend a concert, you can go to the former power plant, which for many years served as the main source of power for the entire factory and adjacent residential buildings.

Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
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The most popular spot in the park is the blast furnace gas meter, built in 1920. Today, there is a diving center here, where visitors can dive to a depth of 13 meters and explore an artificially created underwater world with real wrecks of an aircraft, old cars, a ship and other objects.

Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
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There are many special areas in the park where children can safely play: climb pipes, climb walls or play football. For teenagers, there is a skateboarding and mountain biking area. It is impossible not to mention the mini-farm with horses, chickens and goats.

Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
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At night, the park turns into a sparkling city thanks to the lighting installation by British artist Jonathan Park, which works from Monday to Thursday in reduced mode (only three chimneys are illuminated), and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in full.

Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
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The adaptation of the territory of the plant to the park aroused great approval both from the professional community and from the concerned public, but it was still not without criticism. Despite the desire of the architects to preserve the memory of the site, the project ignored the fact of the forced labor of Jewish prisoners at the factory during the Second World War. Most of them could not stand the backbreaking work, but neither a monument nor even a memorial sign was erected for them.

Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
Парк Дуйсбург-Норд © Thomas Berns
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Of all the three projects I have mentioned, the Duisburg-Nord Park is now the most famous region of North Rhine-Westphalia - including abroad - and is widely used as an example of effective work with non-functioning industrial areas.

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