thesis advisor: Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Alisa Andrasek
topic: diploma thesis
year: 2008
Urban strategy for the Krupp-Guertel
The "Kruppguertel" in Essen (formally the location of the Thyssen-Krupp industry), is an excellent development area in the heart of a post-industrial region in change.
One of the pithiest characters of the Ruhrgebiet is the heterogeneity in material, organization, form and density of the urban environment. Taking advantage from the heterogeneity of the Ruhrgebiet, only the overlapping areas of different interests, properties and objects become materialized.
On the site are carefully placed fields of interest, based on contextual data or impulses of planned devices. In an iterational process, they counterbalance each other, by adding fields with missing properties. The process fades in the scale of the object with upward iteration. The system reacts to change the properties or by adding or removing of a field.
The overlapping areas define the center fields for the object level of the simulation process.
The object level process is based on the research of grouping principles. By tuning the grouping parameters with situational specific values evaluated on the center-field-level, the objects stabilize in balanced relationships. Edaphic configurations. Consequently: by adding, removing or changing objects, the configuration would be balanced in an entirely different way. Edaphication works as an underlying continuity of the Ruhrgebiet.
Edaphication is a methodology for evaluation of information networks, based on contextual data and general studies of grouping principles.
By the use of a parametrical relational network between the particular city-layers emerge urban figurations on the linkage points, in the structural coherence of a postindustrial region. Identity becomes a result of the subjective perception of multiple readings.
