22.10.2024

State Garden Show 2024

Building design

2024, Landscape architecture, State Garden Show

The 2024 State Garden Shows are already a reason to celebrate! For example at the construction site party in Wangen Im Allgäu. Photo: State Garden Show Wangen; Tarja Pruess

Which cities are hosting the 2024 State Garden Show? Here is an overview.

Which cities are hosting the 2024 State Garden Show? Here is an overview.

The year 2024 awaits with three garden shows. The first will be held in the brine town of Bad Dürrenberg in Saxony-Anhalt from the end of April. The Baden-Württemberg State Garden Show in Wangen im Allgäu will follow shortly afterwards. And the Bavarian State Garden Show in Kirchheim will start in mid-May. Originally, Thuringia was also due to host a garden show in 2024, but due to problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the show in Leinefelden-Worbis has been postponed until 2025.

The state horticultural show in Saxony-Anhalt suffered a similar fate. Originally scheduled for 2022, it was also postponed, first by a year and then by a whole two years. But the time has finally come in 2024. From April 19 to October 13, 2024, everything in the small brine town of Bad Dürrenberg will be under the motto “Salt Crystal & Flower Magic”. It is the fifth state garden show in the federal state. The salt in the title comes from the healing salt air in the town. Responsible for this special feature is the longest graduation house still in operation in Europe, an imposing structure 636 meters long and twelve meters high. In Bad Dürrenberg, the scents of the magnificent herbaceous beds will therefore be mixed with a subtle hint of salt. The design for the State Garden Show was provided by Rehwaldt Landscape Architects, who won the competition for the 15.3-hectare site back in 2018.

They developed the historic spa gardens in Bad Dürrenberg into a multifaceted park. On the one hand, they want to restore the value of the historic grounds, while at the same time integrating contemporary garden spaces. The imposing graduation tower serves as the backbone for individual sections of the design. For example, a spacious entrance will be created at the northern entrance. The footprint of the former graduation works is reinterpreted as a square that serves as a link to the area in front of the town hall. In the north of the complex, a new wooden deck will rest on the existing foundations and invite people to linger. A wide lawn will be created adjacent to it. The historic garden structures will be carefully redesigned. Their structure will be retained and the paths and plantings will be carefully restored. As a new element, Rehwaldt landscape architects are adding a water parterre in the area of the current playground.

After the long wait, everyone involved is looking forward to the opening next year. The city hopes that the major event will bring about a positive change in image. The measures are intended to contribute to the long-term development of the city as an attractive place to live and work, but also as a “green brine city”.

At the end of April, from October 26 to 6, the State Garden Show in Wangen im Allgäu will also take place. It is the largest state garden show in Baden-Württemberg to date. And it has set itself some major goals under the motto “lively, colorful, colorful”. The historic old town will be connected to the former ERBA industrial site, which will be sustainably upgraded. A large park on the River Argen with accessible and renaturalized areas as well as 400 new residential units in timber construction in the Auwiesen area will be created. The competition was won by Lohrer.hochrein landschaftsarchitekten und stadtplaner gmbh together with löhle.neubauer_architekten BDA pmbb.

They focused on the existing urban fabric characterized by greenery and water and developed three different urban characters along the Argen in the processing area. A pathway concept, which stages plazas and green spaces, connects all sub-areas. The Argen space is artificially elevated by new meadow ramps, which strengthens the perceptibility of the river in the urban space. For landscape architect Axel Lohrer, this was a key design decision: “The Argen is three meters deep in its bed along almost its entire length. We want a meadow where you can walk with a baby carriage and from where you can get to the water. Part of the idea behind the whole thing is that I can use these green spaces on my doorstep from the old town.” From next year, residents and visitors alike will be able to experience this concept for themselves.

Shortly after the garden show in Wangen im Allgäu, the Bavarian State Garden Show will also start in Kirchheim near Munich from May 15 to October 6. “Growing together” is the motto, as the garden show aims to demonstrate how urban development and the preservation or creation of new green spaces can be combined. More than 100,000 square meters of new greenery will be created on the 14-hectare site as part of the garden show. The local park between the two districts of Kirchheim and Heimstetten will be the key design element. SINAI Gesellschaft von Landschaftsarchitekten mbH from Berlin is providing the design.

They created five contrasting atmospheres under the keywords wilderness, water, forest, meadows and garden. These serve the purpose of recreation and appropriation for visitors. At the same time, they have a high ecological value as retreats in the city. The planners not only succeeded in harmoniously integrating the new public buildings on the edge of the park into the concept. They also insisted on integrating the existing trees and shrubs. In future, these will be combined with species that are better able to cope with the challenges of the climate crisis. The selection of species will create a resilient forest that will last long after the garden show year. Finally, a park lake measuring over 7,000 square meters as the focal point in front of the new town hall won over the jury in the competition. The body of water will be accompanied by water-influenced landscaped areas such as reed islands and alluvial trees. The construction work is in full swing. The future centerpiece – the landscape lake – has been fed with water for a few weeks now. In a year’s time, visitors will be able to refresh themselves in the cool water in the summer temperatures.

The garden shows in Bad Dürrenberg, Wangen im Allgäu and Kirchheim are set to be an exciting summer in 2024 for all those interested and those responsible. Once the challenging planning and construction phases have been completed, you can look forward to high-quality, green permanent installations and inspiring temporary exhibitions.

Would you like to delve even deeper into the concepts of the 2024 State Garden Shows? You can find more information, for example on the Kirchheim State Garden Show, here.

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Building design

General

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21.11.2024

Tens of millions for the unloved barn

Building design

General

The Museum der Moderne will be expensive. Very expensive. But what is scandalous is not that the budget was approved. But how it was approved. Here is the opinion of architecture critic Falk Jaeger.

Herzog & de Meuron’s Museum der Moderne has been criticized from all sides for years: it is far too expensive, the design is not appealing and the visual axis between the National Gallery and the Philharmonie is being obstructed. Now the budget committee of the German Bundestag has approved the cost plan for the project. How can it be that politicians are ignoring all the facts and public objections and approving the exorbitant cost plan for a new museum, while the other buildings of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation have long been in need of renovation?

Visualizations: Herzog & de Meuron

Rarely has a public building project in Germany provoked so much headwind as the Museum der Moderne. A shitstorm, you could almost say, if the contributions to the discussion were not of a serious nature. “The most expensive crusty bread in the world”, was the headline in the FAZ, referring to a metaphor used by jury chairman Arno Lederer. “This barn is a scandal” was the headline of another FAZ article, a scathing all-round attack that scandalized the location, architecture, size, environmental aspects and costs in equal measure.

Some points of criticism even overshoot the mark. The castigation of the sacrilegious proposal to block the line of sight from Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie to Scharoun’s Philharmonie (nicely illustrated by Stefan Braunfels in another polemic) is an all too superficial, silly stop-the-thief argument. Of course, a new building in this location would interrupt the view, but Scharoun had already planned it that way in terms of urban development, and Mies had to assume this in his planning.

Why would the view be so indispensable? If you want to see the Philharmonie, you can just step outside the door. In the beginning, when the Tiergarten was still free of trees due to the war, you could even see the Brandenburg Gate from the Neue Nationalgalerie, so what the heck.

The Tagesspiegel described the situation as “eyes closed and through”, and was right: the budget committee of the German Bundestag approved another hefty gulp from the taxpayers’ purse for the Museum der Moderne, thereby imposing a voluntary commitment for future increases in building costs from 364.2 million to a forecast 450 million euros. It certainly won’t stay at that, it’s more likely to be 600 million. But then the project will be under construction and there will be no turning back.

Dependence on private donors

The real scandal is how the Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters (CDU), has pushed through her personal “Grand Projet” against the most diverse reservations in the backrooms of politics. The political caste is making up its own mind about the project. Facts, pragmatic considerations and public opinion play no role. Perhaps the highly controversial architecture of the Museum der Moderne (“barn”, “ALDI discount store” etc.) would not have been a sufficient reason for a rejection, after all it was the result of a competition with a prominent jury. However, the urban planning problems, the reduction in the floor plan with the consequence of the expensive, difficult-to-calculate lowering into the extremely problematic Berlin building ground, should have given the housekeepers food for thought.

It is also annoying to see the submissive dependence on some private donors who had threatened to move their collections elsewhere. This is due to the fact that the foundation can hardly organize its own major projects, internationally attractive exhibitions, and is dependent on partners who are willing to pay.

Too many building sites

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is constantly being “gifted” new, magnificent museums by the federal government, which then have to be used and maintained. However, there are already decades of renovation backlogs at the existing houses. In addition, there is inadequate funding for qualified specialist staff and a pitiful acquisition budget of 1.6 million for all museums. None of this fits together.

The Foundation should finally be consolidating. Instead, the Humboldt Forum in the palace replica is to be brought back on track in 2020, the general renovations of the Pergamon Museum, the New National Gallery and Scharoun’s State Library are devouring huge sums of money and so on…

It’s no wonder that Berlin looks longingly at the popular major exhibition events in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York. We want to play in that league too, we want to have something like that here again.