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1991 |
/ 92 Joint summer semester with Brunswick Technical University, »Wounds« Exhibitions and a publication; a workshop week at the Bauhaus on »Mining Wastelands around Bitterfeld - Problems, Chances, Visions« Publication and first prize from the federal ministry for housing for environmentally-friendly urban planning and landscape design |
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1994 |
Founding of the Post-mining Landscape umbrella organization |
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1995 |
The open-cast mine is opened to visitors, footpaths and workshop areas are integrated into the
final plan, official acknowledgment by the mining authorities.
In the interim, more than 6,000 visitors have visited the site |
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1996 |
/ 98 Summer schools and »Claim Summer« together with universities and colleges from all
over Germany - experimental gardens are laid out; public presentations on special activity
days |
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1997 |
These areas are included in official tour programs of the region |
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cultivation instead
of restoration
The brown-coal pits - like the one in Golpa-Nord - supplied raw material for an industrial
region which prospered as of the early 20th century. Excavators used in the open-cast mines
cut unprecedented vast gashes in the countryside; cultural landscapes were destroyed and
transformed.
Barren areas - forbidden and shunned landscapes - arose near the great gardens of the
Enlightenment. Hence, the beginning and end of an age seem to have settled at this
location. Two poles that one might expect to find at opposite ends of the earth collide
here and so become syn-onymous for the limitations and indivisibility of nature.
In the early nineties, coal mining ceased at Golpa-Nord and work began on »restoring«
the landscape. The blemish was to be erased from the face of the earth and the wound -
with its great expressive force and sculptural power - was to be hidden under a stereotypical
artificial lake. The Bauhaus counterpoised this plan with a model to appropriate and
cultivate the landscape. By making the pit available for landscape design experiments
and countless public walks, people's perception changed.
The abhorred remains of the
gash were transformed into a landscape of the
imagination and hope, thus departing from
the idyll of the English garden and arriving in a landscape laboratory and garden of the
21st century.
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