Nordrhein-Westfalen

On 3 May 2018, the award ceremony of the nrw.landscapearchitektur.preis 2018 took place at the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf. More than 120 guests accepted the invitation and celebrated the award winners, visited the premiere exhibition together and took the opportunity for collegial exchange.

For the seventh time, the North Rhine-Westphalia regional group of the Association of German Landscape Architects (bdla nw) awarded the nrw.landscape.architecture.prize. Out of 30 entries, the jury chaired by Prof. Gert Aufmkolk unanimously awarded prizes to four entries that excellently demonstrate how parks, gardens and open spaces address future issues and create innovative and impressive landscape experiences. This award is intended to highlight the creativity and the design and performance capabilities of landscape architects. Projects, planners and clients are honoured whose work is exemplary because it promotes high-quality, socially and ecologically oriented settlement and landscape development and contemporary, courageous and creative landscape architecture.

The four prizes went to Danielzik, Leuchter + Partner, Landschaftsarchitekten bdla from Duisburg for the project "Rheinische Bahn Essen - RS1", to the office Sinai Gesellschaft von Landschaftsarchitekten from Berlin for the project "WaldKurPark im Rahmen der Landesgartenschau Bad Lippspringe", to Brigitte Röde, Landschaftsarchitektin bdla from Cologne for the "Auengarten am Rhein", and to the office wbp Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH from Bochum, for the project "Seepark Körbecke Möhnesee".

The Museum für Architektur und Ingenieurkunst NRW (M:AI), together with the Bund Deutscher Landschaftsarchitekten NRW (Association of German Landscape Architects NRW), presented the exhibition on the Landscape Architecture Award with the projects submitted. As a mobile museum, the M:AI is dedicated to landscape as a moment of urban design and supports the public perception of landscape architecture with the exhibition of all submitted works.

After the award ceremony, bdla nw and M:AI will show the exhibition at several locations in the coming months and invite discussions on the future status of "green infrastructure". Next date: 15 June to 15 July 2018 at Gartenschaupark Bad Lippspringe.

The nrw.landschaftsarchitektur.preis is supported by the company Rinn Beton- und Naturstein GmbH & Co.KG and by the Verband Garten-, Landschafts- und Sportplatzbau NRW e.V..

Winners of the nrw.landscapearchitecture.award 2018

A total of 30 works were submitted. Four projects were awarded prizes.

Prize
The office of Danielzik, Leuchter + Partner, Landschaftsarchitekten bdla, Duisburg was awarded for the project "Rheinische Bahn Essen - RS1".
The award was given in particular for the way the office dealt with the major topic of the future - the establishment of new forms of mobility in conurbations. The office of Danielzik, Leuchter + Partner shows that cycle paths, in this case the section of the RS1 between Essen and Mülheim, can be more than sober traffic routes from A to B; in the hands of the landscape architect, they become urban-landscape experience spaces.
Industrial relics, rail bridges, but also the vegetation images of industrial nature are staged to create a linear spatial experience. Recreational zones, connections to urban spaces and parks structure the route and offer decentralised entry points to the cycle path. The route offers enough space for people in a hurry and for strollers. Function and design are thus ideally linked in this project and offer a pioneering overall concept in the literal sense of the word.

Prize
The office of wbp landschaftsarchitekten GmbH, Bochum, was awarded the prize for the "Seepark Körbecke Möhnesee" project.
Wbp landscape architects developed a grand gesture for this site, which has been over-formed in many ways and has had its relationships disturbed. The gesture was developed from the history of the site. With the intervention of the landscape staircase reaching deep into the land, they define a new open space situation that restores the water connection to the outskirts of Körbecke. As strong and impressive as this brace appears at first in its large-scale form, it is nevertheless sparse, simple and robust in detail - a consistent and unexcited implementation of the idea. The handling of the topography is careful and appropriate. The meadow bordering the waterfront can be used freely and opens up a view of an open landscape that can now be experienced.
Landscape architecture thus sets new and impressive signs by means of careful interventions. The project is also a good example of how, with a limited budget, forgotten places can be brought back to consciousness and translated into impressive landscape experiences.

Prize
Brigitte Röde, landscape architect bdla, Cologne was awarded for the project "Auengarten am Rhein, Cologne".
The garden is the starting point of landscape architects' work; it challenges the design virtues of our profession in a small space. Brigitte Röde succeeds in placing a well-proportioned garden in the transition between settlement and floodplain with few, reduced means, which to a high degree takes into account the special features of the site, the valuable tree population and the architectural qualities and demands. The design shows - especially through the classical motif of the Aha - a sensitive sense of space.
Starting from the basic composition, the high level of quality continues into the use of materials for the pavements and walls, rounded off by a finely tuned use of plants. Here, too, the simplicity of the formal language is particularly convincing and enhances the effect of the garden.

Prize
The project "WaldKurPark Bad Lippspringe" by SINAI Gesellschaft von Landschaftsarchitekten mbH from Berlin received an award.
Forest and settlement, forest and park, forest and recreation are - in professional and legal terms - regularly opposing pairs. The forest is defended with vehemence in the fear that any change will cause destruction and loss. The WaldKurPark in Bad Lippspringe is the counter-evidence that can change thinking nationwide. The SINAI office has succeeded in breaking this taboo and proving that the path from forest to park, to forest park, generates added value: settlement areas and forest are next to each other, not against each other, recreation in the forest takes place in new places and outside the backwoods and forest paths. The new clearings, the "most beautiful" thing in the forest, bring sunlight, warmth and comfort into the "Tann", from which people, but especially nature, benefit - the richness of species in the herb layer is proof enough.
The design connects the spa park and the forest through large, open axes. The resulting aisles in the forest, straight and strict in their interplay with the now legible dune landscape of the Senne, provide an exciting and impressive basic framework for a park in and around the forest. The transitions are fluid, the intensities of use and design carefully graduated to an impressive use of plants, especially in the theme of perennials and alternating planting. This creates impressive spatial experiences, the forest and the park merge into a standard-setting ensemble. More than half a million visitors to the 2017 State Garden Show are proof of this.
This award also recognises the courage of the city and the authorities in tackling this "WaldKurPark".

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