Landschaftspark Belvedere Köln - 9a Biennal 2016

Frank Lohrberg

The “Belvedere Park” in Cologne exemplifies a new type of urban park, the “productive park”. Different to the main tradition of landscape architecture the design does not substitute productive land uses like agriculture but makes use of them to create a park.
A new path was created allowing the people to surround the area. The emblematic path design – half mineral-bound, half water-bound surface – is made for both, urban dwellers and agricultural vehicles. A second feature of the park are four steel lookouts which mark the path. From the highest platform of the lookout “Domblick” visitors can observe the whole scenery – from the nearby highway, to harvesters on the fields, to the Cologne Cathedral at the horizon. The lookout “Felderblick” is formed as a catwalk allowing the visitors to delve in the aesthetic features of field crops like the heavy fragrance of rapeseed flowers or the cracking sound of grain ears. The farmers involved in the design process and independently offered to grow more flowering catch crops. In addition, a resident Institut for plant breeding acted as a co-producer of the park. Situated right in the middle of the area the Institute created a “science barn” and a crop plant garden showing traditional species cultivated in this area, partly since more than 3.000 years.
The two examples highlight he general approach which is not to substitute agriculture in order to make a park, but to make use of it to create a new form of park.

Autors

Frank Lohrberg

lohrberg stadtlandschaftsarchitektur