Dieter Nellen – författare

The Sound of Architecture is a personal book about the internationally active Dortmund architect Eckhard Gerber. It is the story of a life between East and West Germany, shaped by his parental home, a Protestant parsonage in Thuringia, his studies in Braunschweig, and his constantly being put to the test by his profession. Eckhard Gerber played the trumpet at an early age and still plays it today. It is no accident that his architecture possesses a musical dimension, combining clarity and emotion. The book is a portrait of an architect’s life, richly documented and rendered with sensitivity by Jürgen Tietz, together with personal texts written by companions and colleagues from across many years. It’s a book that deals with the current issues of architecture and urban planning: Baukultur and the culture of architectural competitions, designing in historical context, art in architecture, and, not least, the social responsibility that architecture bears. With contributions by Falk Jaeger, Kaspar Kraemer, Gerhard Langemeyer, Rouven Lotz, Dieter Nellen, Sebastian Redecke, Christa Reicher, Dietrich Sattler, Wolfgang Sonne, and Jörn Walter

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Dortmund is once again a growing city boasting great achievements with regard to the transformation of its old industrial areas. In the last two decades, integrative strategies for industrial structural change and urbanization have been developed, scarcely rivaled by any other former European mining region. The renaturation of the Emscher river landscape—a project of the century—has already been completed here. New addresses, districts, and projects have been springing up in many parts of the city. The city center is once again being given a new face, after the functional aberrations of the post-war period. A campaign targeted towards the developmental potential of districts supports the approach of upgrading the city as a whole.As a book about the current and future status, the innovative strategies of the Dortmund urban development policy are presented in themed clusters. It illuminates leading projects and key areas and presents long-term governance and participation concepts. The insider report is linked to outside perspectives. Internal and external involved parties, observers, and authors all have their say, resulting in a well-founded documentation of urban development, urbanity, architecture, building culture, and landscape design in the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Sound of Architecture - in accordance with this key notion, for more than five decades the architect Eckhard Gerber and his firm have been producing award-winning projects, which have attracted widespread international attention in the fields of architecture, urban design, interior design, and landscape design.

Düsseldorf is growing—in both its economy and its urban space. Yet the metropolis on the Rhine is doing so not by reinventing itself but by gaining new qualities. As in other, similar European metropolises, this wave of development offers an opportunity to further raise the profile of architecture and urban development and to launch projects in public space, art, culture, and infrastructure, with contemporary forms of living and new mobility. Düsseldorf regularly scores highly on rankings of quality of life and profits from its location on the Rhine and the urban development of the river’s banks. This publication provides a compact overview of current key projects, formats, areas, addresses, competitions, and participation initiatives in the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. It gives voice to the City of Düsseldorf and its main actors.

Düsseldorf is growing - in both its economy and its urban space. Yet the metropolis on the Rhine is doing so not by reinventing itself but by gaining new qualities. As in other, similar European metropolises, this wave of development offers an opportunity to further raise the profile of architecture and urban development and to launch projects in public space, art, culture, and infrastructure, with contemporary forms of living and new mobility. Düsseldorf regularly scores highly on rankings of quality of life, and it profits from its location on the Rhine and the urban development of the river's banks. This publication provides a compact overview of current key projects, formats, areas, addresses, competitions, and participation initiatives in the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. It gives voice to the City of Düsseldorf and its main actors.

For a long time, the Emscher was Germany’s dirtiest river. Now, however, it runs clear again. This volume documents the social and ecological restoration of the Emscher, which flows through the northern Ruhr area for 81 km. Used as a mining wastewater system during the industrial period, it has now been transformed into a new regional river landscape for the twenty-first century. Numerous opportunities for upgrading the overall region find their source in the renaturing of the river and its many backwaters: the restoration has created opportunities for renaturing and conversion, and provides a strong development axis for sustainable city and landscape planning. The overall strategy, key projects, accompanying materials, and regional political discussion around this comprehensive transformation are presented here with texts, plans, and images for the first time.