Introduction

Neustadt (New City) is a fictive city made up of 1:25-scale models of various buildings in the Ruhr region that were demolished since the 2000s. The permanent installation of altogether 23 sculptures is located on a stretch of green in Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord and is part of the Emscherkunstweg (Emscher Art Trail), a sculpture path along the river Emscher which flows from West to East through the industrial cityscapes of the Ruhr area. Researching the history of construction and demolition in the Ruhr region over the past twenty years, Julius von Bismarck and Marta Dyachenko selected 23 torn down buildings, including residential houses, water parks, churches and schools, to bring them back to life in form of sculptures. The new city of “old buildings” houses a cross-section of local urban architecture ranging from late 19th-century historicist apartment buildings from Essen to a 16-story skyscraper nicknamed the “Weiße Riese” in Kamp-Lintfort. Two public pools, a community school and two churches, one of them built in 1904 in neo-Gothic style and torn down in 2015, are examples of the social change that has taken place within the public engagement for the communities and religious congregations.


Rather than following a rigorous selection procedure, the artists largely based their choice of buildings on sculptural and aesthetic criteria. The many details such as ornamental window fixtures, wall reliefs, or countless tiny window panes made of acrylic glass, form a visually delicate contrast with the concrete and steel – the principal raw materials used to construct all miniature buildings across the park. Neustadt raises issues on city-development and urban sustainability. Sculptures like the resurrection of the Volkshochschule in Essen with its remarkable tiered architecture and washed concrete reliefs on the façade or the indoor swimming pool in Marl – both once celebrated examples of post-war architectural modernity – raise questions about the logic of preservation and demolition. On a broader scale, similar questions which prompt reflection on urban planning and environmental governance, are likewise mirrored in the structural change of the Ruhr region and the Emscher River conversion.


Neustadt was curated by Britta Peters, artistic director of Urbane Künste Ruhr. The Emscher Art Trail is a cooperation between Urbane Künste Ruhr, Emschergenossenschaft and Regionalverband Ruhr. The sculptural installation has been consciously integrated into what appears to be fallow land, yet which in fact was landscaped as part of the International Architecture Exhibition IBA Emscher Park in the 1990s, and thus – in addition to the dramatic shifts in scale – reflects the relationship between nature and culture.