INDUSTRIAL RUHR

IN PROGRESS

Ruhr Area is the world's largest industrial agglomerate with heavy concentration of coal fields, steel mills, chemical and industrial plants. The Ruhr is also Germany’s most densely populated region with over 5 million inhabitants in various cities and towns established for factory workers and their families.

Through out the years this area was historically, politically, socially and economically a fascinating example of urban structure that had a huge impact on international level. With rapid industrial growth after 1850's Ruhr area was setting the example in industry for England and France creating thousands of structural and engineering patents which we still use in architecture today. Industrial development in 20th century also had a big impact on art and architecture all over the world creating such styles as Modenism, Brutalism and Functionalism, as well as Structural Expressionism.

So now, while German government is planning to shut down all the plants till 2035 and last coal mine was closed in 2018, as an architect, I have to pay my respects to more than 150 years of it's history, to memorize and record the structural beauty of industrial elements and to write about the impact on millions of families from both positive and negative sides creating an impartial story about this unique area.

In this project I’m not going to raise obvious questions about the need to close all the mines and about catastrophic environmental situation, as well as I’m not going to discuss historical topics, the amount of work spaces this area created through out the years for citizens and migrants or various ways of contemporary transaction of the region to research, IT and development centers and museums. I'm much more interested in forming a coherent archive with photo story which follows life of workers and their families through out the era along with life cycle of plants and factories and the land itself.

12.2019         c