Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park

Abstract

“THERE IS ABSOLUTELY no need for parks anymore because the 19th century problems have been solved and a new type of city has been created. The park and greenery have become worn-out clichés. Our parks will never have the beauty and the power of those in the 19th century. But that is not the only reason. This century created a new type of order. Order can be based on disconnection and superimposing.” Adriaan Geuze made this provocative suggestion about the future of parks on the occasion of an international symposium called “The Park” in Rotterdam in 1992. Peter Latz took part, along with many other distinguished European landscape architects, and presented his plans for a new “Park for the 21st century”. Geuze said that in the course of the 19th century the city had developed into a kind of monster that was destroying its occupants, and so the invention of municipal parks like the Parc Buttes Chaumont in Paris or Central Park in New York with their exquisite illusion of nature, borrowed from popular 18th century landscape painting, had been absolutely essential for survival, but today?