Design Seminar: Germany

Ruhr area: the aesthetics of an agglomeration

The Ruhr area is one of Europe’s major agglomerations with an industrial history. But since more than twenty‐five years the region has undergone a fundamental structural change.
Settlement, industry, infrastructure, urban agriculture and forestry created a new typology of… well, what? Landscape, agglomeration, metropolis, polycentric region?
We will discover the region by hiking and biking. We want to approximate the agglomeration from its outskirts, discussing the problems, opportunities and challenges of an (required?)
aesthetic care. Finally, we want to discuss, if the developed strategies of the Ruhr area can be transferred to the Alpine Rhine Valley.
Together we want to explore the variety of the Ruhr area in form of field research and selfawareness. We will set a variety of topics that we are going to discover: urban quality of life, free mobility, agriculture and self‐sufficiency, urban culture and heritage, diversity etc.