In Duisburg, the ironworks founded in 1902 to supply the Thyssen steelworks shut its last blast furnace in 1985. It was not demolished: landscape architect Peter Latz turned it into a 180-hectare public park, where woodland grows over the brownfield and visitors climb to the top of blast furnace 5.
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The last shift left blast furnace 5 on 4 April 1985. The Emscher Park International Building Exhibition launched a competition, won by Latz + Partner: keep the machines, let the brownfield vegetation take over the ground, turn the ore bunkers into gardens. The park opened in 1994. In 2016 it welcomed 1,019,391 visitors and its halls were hired more than 800 times.
The youth hostel inside the park has 142 beds in 39 rooms, all with showers, and meeting rooms. For a plenary or a dinner, the city-owned company that runs the site hires out the Kraftzentrale power station, the blower hall complex and the casting hall with its grandstand; the former steam blower house is now a 500-seat theatre. Duisburg-Meiderich Süd station is 1.3 km away.
Photo credits : Dietmar Rabich (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) ; Tuxyso (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) ; 1971markus (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
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