Ingolstadt State Garden Show 2020 1st prize - open, single-stage ideas and implementation competition

LANDESGARTENSCHAU INGOLSTADT 2020
Park between industry, culture and agriculture

The grounds of the Landesgartenschau 2020 in Ingolstadt are located in the area of tension between the city and the surrounding countryside, industry and agriculture.
With each era, the city expanded. Ever new uses, homogeneous in the time of the defensive fortifications and often heterogeneous in more recent times, with ever greater demands on land, encroached on farmland and grassland.
In the northwest of Ingolstadt, such an assemblage of industrial structures, shopping centres, residential development and agricultural land, flanked by busy traffic arteries, shapes the planning area of the new open space structure and influences its design.
Axes and crystalline structures characterize the image of the new park and contrast with both the agricultural surroundings and the industrial facilities. Earthen bodies push out of the plain, enable changes of perspective and generate a lively interplay of height and depth, as well as width and narrowness. Around the park terrace in the center, explosively colored crystals sprayed into the surrounding fields and meadows lend expression to the tension.
The park terrace is the center, entrance, path connection and dynamic square area at the same time, allows movement, stay and bundles functional requirements such as bike path, footpath connection or area for city festivals. The highlight is the perennial planting of the crystal structures with their colour spectrum of red, orange, yellow and blue tones. Solitaires of Parrotia persica line up with their flaming fall color.
Terraces lead down to the lake, which adjoins the park terrace with its clear edges. This barrier-free access on the east and south sides creates immediate experience of the water. While the lake presents itself as a calm water surface, the theme of water can be experienced in different ways in the water gardens via cascades, stepping stones, jets and various plantings. Strong contrasts between horizontal and vertical, between built and vegetative structures emerge and are partially blurred by fog nozzles as a kind of soft focus. The ford intersects an open expanse of water, allowing descent and dry passage, while water cascades down to the right and left. Between the lake and the water gardens lies the water playground and, with its interactive water elements, in combination with a climbing facility, provides largely barrier-free fun and exciting surprises for all age groups.
The remaining areas of agriculture in the southern park are integrated, create space and become part of the new multicoded urban and landscape space, intertwined with citizen initiatives of urban gardening.
Tree rows connect tree-covered areas in the south, with the open, narrow park space in the north. Sinuous wooden play sculptures lie like apples in a meadow of fruit trees at the edge of the field.
The high point of the site was deliberately set to the north. The landmark, made of two ground sculptures connected by a pedestrian walkway, asserts itself between industrial architecture and traffic and provides a view of the landscape. Different play levels extend from the square between the hills up to the highest plateau, equipped with integrative elements that appeal to the senses. Skill is required in the rope structure spanning under the footbridge.
The newly created park, with its important barrier-free neighbourhood connections, functions as a connecting element and green backbone, for the residential and commercial settlements envisaged in the framework plan. As part of the future second green ring, it secures this urban development goal, assumes the role of a stimulus for urban and landscape developments and sets new accents in the interplay between ecological compensation, agriculture and active recreation.