Thieplatz in Bad Laer

The municipality of Bad Laer has grown considerably in the past decades and needed a functional as well as qualitative upgrading of its central public space. The special feature of the place, where the square presented here was created in 2006, is based on the completely preserved settlement-historical appearance of a former round village (Rundling) with a free, tree-lined centre in the style of a village green.

This posed the planning task of developing integrative solutions to bring the found historical qualities into harmony with the complex demands of a multifunctional usable square space in a way that can be experienced. In addition to the first (rural) roundel, the "Thieplatz", a second roundel, the (ecclesiastical) Kirchhofburg, was built in the Middle Ages, the layout of which is still clearly visible today. Both round buildings are connected by a small (middle-class) square, the "Paulbrink", where the first shops and commercial establishments of the village developed early on and which has remained a central business location to this day. The "Paulbrink", which is open to the south, is spatially accentuated by a newly created loggia with pillars made of sintered limestone typical for the location and thus acquires a more intimate square character. The loggia forms a roof over the historic fountain and is now a year-round meeting place with its benches. A street, whose frequency was strongly reduced by the building of a local bypass, separated this range clearly from the Thieplatz.

One of the urban planning goals was it therefore the partial ranges under inclusion of a traffic calming concept again more strongly to connect. This was achieved by creating a continuous square area, which also spans the street as a "carpet", as it were. The slight height offset in the area of the crossing acts as an attention-grabbing factor and brake for the flowing traffic. On the resulting coherent square area, between the business zone in the north and the music pavilion in the south, a wide variety of activities, markets and events now take place. The activation of grown structures also includes the restoration of the historic "Kirchweg" (church path), which now accompanies the square in a north-south direction through a rose pergola and relieves traffic during large events.