Güterbahnhof

‘District G’ is our proposal for a new Duisburg. Lively and diverse, faithful to its history, but also ambitious and experimental - where sustainability is promoted in all aspects. It brings the railway edge back into the city, generating a space that offers a new set of possibilities for the familiar, the new and the unexpected. A vibrant urban area with unique office typologies, housing, opportunities for recreation and new economic models. District G is our vision for a new way of working and living: a quarter that is not defined by iconic buildings but rather by high-quality public space. The interaction between buildings and their environment offers new possibilities for work, sport, recreation, and of course, nature. 

While towards the railway it provides a sense of urbanity, towards the city, ‘District G’ does the opposite, it opens up and showcases itself to the entire city! The elevated green corridor provides a striking new face towards the west. The park rises and peeks over the highway towards the city, enticing the inhabitants to come and discover the new green space.

By building a compact quarter, ‘District G’ provides maximum space for green towards the City. The park is not only an inviting piece of landscape infrastructure, it is a clever result of multiple pragmatic and functional challenges on site. The existing polluted soil is re-used on site to generate a robust green cliff that protects from the incoming highway sounds and provides a quiet refuge for urban life. At the same time, it generates a unique and interesting backbone for activity and life. The entire park is a carefully choreographed play of spaces at the intersection between this new ‘green cliff’ backbone and the central part of the park.

A traditional masterplan cannot anticipate precisely the changing nature of the future. Therefore, we propose the urban plan to be much more a robust framework: a comprehensive ideological base for urban development, regulation and planning. The framework allows flexibility to respond to changing circumstances while steering the development of the station area towards a higher quality urban condition over longer periods, and stimulates programmatic and typological diversity.  At its core, ‘District G’ is structured as an “urban Wunderkammer”. Highly flexible and interchangeable, these solids provide the ultimate dynamic framework. The Wunderkammer is an ever-changing mosaic of public spaces and buildings that draw upon the identity of their surroundings to generate a whole new type of urbanity.