New centre Staßfurt Redevelopment of the historic city centre

With the redesign of the town centre, the people of Staßfurt got back their historic centre, which had been lost due to subsidence, as a designed and usable open space. The ensembles Großer Markt, Kirchplateau, Kirschbaumwiese, Kottenstraße with foot and cycle path bridge and the extended Kaligarten are grouped around the new town lake. The themes of subsidence and loss were carefully incorporated into the design. The development of a town centre as an open space with the means of landscape architecture in a dialogue between planners, developers, citizens and the IBA makes this project remarkable. This was recognised by the award of the German Urban Development Prize in 2012 and an award in the Architecture Prize of the State of Saxony-Anhalt in 2013.

Since the opening of the first shafts in 1852, the salt and soil town of Staßfurt has been regarded worldwide as the "cradle of potash mining". The "white gold" made the town rich, but it turned into a curse when the mine floodplain "drowned wildly" at the end of the 19th century. Since then, a mining subsidence area runs diagonally through the historic core. About 800 buildings fell victim to the subsidence, among them the Gothic St. Johannis Church and the Renaissance Town Hall. For years, the place was characterised by emptiness and neglect. As part of the IBA Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010, Staßfurt tackled the theme of "lifting the centre" with the aim of giving the town centre a new appearance and thus a new meaning and identity for the entire town.
The engineering challenge lay in reducing subsidence and stabilising the subsoil, based on many years of research. Decentralized and reduced pumping created a 4500 square meter lake in the subsidence crater as the most impressive element of the new city center. The design of this lake, its shore areas and adjacent areas and streets as well as the area of the town church and the Great Market describe the scope of the project.
The design thematizes the subsidence of the mountain as a special feature of the site. The subsidence area is formed as an open spatial unit, in which the lake, the Great Market and the area of the church are inserted.
The lake follows the topography of the site. The gravel on the shore is reminiscent of crystalline salt, which once led to the prosperity of the city, but also to the loss of its historic center. Streets that end as platforms above the water allow the torn network to be experienced sensuously. The Great Market lies as a smooth asphalt surface in a bed of small cobblestones. The white concrete ring is reminiscent of the historic fountain. The adjoining church property to the north, on which the remains of the St. Johannis Church and the so-called Leaning Tower are located 50 cm below today's level, remains untouched and was designed as a flat horizontal lawn. In the lawn, a corten steel sculpture marks the foundation walls of the tower, which was a landmark of the city for more than 500 years. A bridge over the lake makes the historic Kottenstraße axis accessible again.