Hessen

Tireless in his work, always precise and innovative - that's how Rainer Mühlinghaus was known. He passed away on August 8, 2024 at the age of 77.

Rainer Mühlinghaus began his career as a research assistant at Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. After some time, he switched from science to planning practice, where he accompanied the nature conservation aspects of the planning for the Neuburg-Weiher barrage. His professional assessment and the results he produced ultimately led to the barrage not being built. At the same time, his expertise earned him a high reputation with the water management authorities and various municipalities. This led to an increasing number of inquiries, all of which concerned the supervision or processing of various landscape planning projects for different municipalities. The steadily growing interest in his expertise finally prompted him to establish his own office in 1986. The numerous inquiries from the town of Bensheim in particular influenced him to set up his first office location in the southern Hessian town. At the same time, he developed an office location at his home in Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, around 60 km away. In addition to the commissions in Bensheim, Rainer Mühlinghaus was significantly involved in the Integrated Rhine Program, the Elzmündung flood retention area and various plans for the conversion of the Söllingen airbase into the Baden-Airpark. His work was also characterized by long-standing connections to municipalities in southern Hesse and Baden. In 1988, Rainer Mühlinghaus was also commissioned with the landscape planning aspects of the Goldscheuer-Marlen bypass as part of several commissions in the Ortenau district. This was a formative project for our office, as it was here that he met his future office partner and current managing director of bhmp, Jochen Bresch. From 1994 onwards, they worked together on a large number of landscape planning projects from Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, which were already supported by computer-aided tools such as GIS and CAD.

Rainer Mühlinghaus was also never able to completely escape scientific work. Together with the later head of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Prof. Beate Jessel, he produced a publication on the development of floodplains and water framework guidelines. He was also involved in associations such as the Hessian Association for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management (HVNL) and the Association of German Landscape Architects (BDLA) in Hesse, where he also served as chairman. Here, he was always concerned with high-quality landscape planning in the sense of a balanced relationship between built use and natural landscape spaces, tailored to the wishes and needs of the residents and the respective location. He logically implemented this interdisciplinary approach by expanding his office in 2000 to include open space and urban planning.

He gave us, his employees, the freedom to work independently and develop sustainable, new ideas. Thanks to him, bhmp was able to grow into a planning office with over 90 employees at its locations in Bruchsal, Freiburg and Nürtingen. Rainer Mühlinghaus is our office founder, advisor and friend, to whom our office owes a great deal and who we will miss.

Max Hansen, Dipl.-Ing. (TUM) Landscape Architect bdla, bhm Planungsgesellschaft mbH Bruchsal.
Iris Mahn-Milla, Dipl.-Ing. Architect, bhm Planungsgesellschaft mbH Bruchsal.

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