Media park
The Media Park (proper spelling: Media Park ) is the name of a predominantly for media companies designed business parks in Cologne district of Neustadt-Nord , which was begun in 1987 and completed of 2004.
history
Cologne was one of the most important media locations in Germany and Europe even before the media park was planned. Originally broadcast from Cologne were WDR (since January 1927), BFBS (February 1954), Deutsche Welle (December 1960) and Deutschlandfunk (January 1962). Numerous newspaper and book publishers , record labels and recording studios were also located here. When RTLplus came to Cologne as the first private broadcaster on January 1, 1988 , the city expanded even faster in the media sector .
In the place of today's MediaPark was the station area of the "Central-Güterbahnhofs Gereon" , which was located in the gusset of the connecting railway and the Aachen line. It went into operation in 1860 and remained Cologne's central freight station for over a century. On September 18, 1987, the city took over the station area, shut it down in October 1987 and decommissioned it on May 27, 1990. The site of today's MediaPark was acquired by the city for the equivalent of around 20 million euros, the equivalent of around 8 million euros in subsidies for development costs.
As part of the city of Cologne's media concept, it was decided in December 1985 to build an industrial park for media companies on the site of the former freight yard . On May 11, 1986, the City Council of Cologne decided to set up the media park. Then in 1987 the 200,000 m² area of the freight yard was acquired. The ideas competition that followed in February 1987 was won in April 1988 by the German-Canadian architect Eberhard Zeidler from Toronto. In October 1988 the MediaPark Köln Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH was founded, which was supposed to take over the project management and became the owner of the site. The site was subdivided into 13 individual lots and gradually sold to investors from November 1989. Not only the building complex as such, but also every single building was designed by an architect.
A large part of the facilities initially located in the MediaPark were publicly owned. The equivalent of almost 7 million euros was made available for the construction of KOMED (communication and media center in the MediaPark) and around 300,000 euros for the ZIM (1993; center for interactive media).
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The Mediapark, located in Cologne's Neustadt-Nord , is an above-ground car-free building complex, the individual structures of which are connected by pedestrian paths, delivery traffic and access are via an underground ring road. The seven-story buildings with the Kölnturm as an accent are arranged in a semicircle around a central square with an artificial lake, which is intended to suggest a (post-) modern variant of the Piazza del Campo in Siena . They were not built at the same time, but sometimes at longer intervals.
With the laying of the foundation stone on December 2nd, 1988 at the Cinedom , the development of the media park began. In December 1991 this multiplex cinema also opened as the first media company in the Mediapark. In June 1992 a GEW substation went into operation to supply the region. The completion of the "Wohnschlange" in October 1993 with 250 apartments showed that the Mediapark was not designed as a pure commercial settlement. In March 1994 the Mediapark 5 building by the architect Miroslav Volf followed with the former major tenant Agfa .
An incipient economic crisis, changes in use, rescheduling and financial difficulties of individual investors subsequently led to construction delays in the Mediapark. Thus, the construction work had on the 148.5-meter-high Cologne tower in April 1995 to be temporarily stopped, as an investor Herbert Hillebrand the trades did not pay more. In January 1996 he founded a project company specifically for the development of the media park. As early as March 1996, a contractual penalty was imposed on him for delays in construction. The KOMED building was handed over in November 1996, followed by the building for the Cologne Literature House (November 1999–2007). The Music Tower opened behind the Cinedom in April 2000, followed by the Jolly Hotel in August 2000. Finally, the inauguration of the Cologne Tower, designed by the Parisian architect Jean Nouvel , took place in 2001 . It consists of a load-bearing central core and pendulum supports at the edge of the individual floors . Its facade reflects the Cologne city panorama with the cathedral.
The MediaPark Clinic also opened in November 2001. In December 2003 the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger realized the “Forum”, the largest of the six buildings flanking the central square with an office area of 34,000 m². It closed the last vacant lot. The open spaces measuring 14.5 hectares were then designed by the landscape and garden architect Jürgen Schubert. The focus is a 20,000 m² lake with a maximum depth of 3.25 m.
Importance and tenant
Mediapark Cologne has long been considered the largest urban development project in Cologne . The central and outstanding building is the Cologne Tower, visible from afar, which dominates the Media Park. The Zeidler concept was criticized by the Cologne BDA in 1988 because it did not meet the “trend-setting urban planning and architectural quality requirements”; Decades later it was described as "a particularly striking example of a very early, extremely large-scale and largely successful urban development use [of a railway site]". About 250 companies with 5000 employees are located on a gross floor area of 174,000 m². The total cost was around 700 million euros, with 4.5 million visitors a year.
Most of the media companies based here are tenants, while the owners are investors such as Victoria Insurance. The tenants include the Hochschule Fresenius Cologne , the Filmbüro Nordrhein-Westfalen , the SK Stiftung Kultur with the photographic collection , the German Dance Archive Cologne and the Akademie för uns kölsche Sproch , the sk stiftung jugend und medien , the Cologne journalism school for politics and business , the Polish Consulate General in Cologne (since December 2013), a hotel and two private clinics, a medical specialist center, a multiplex cinema and numerous catering facilities. Until August 2010, the headquarters of EMI Music Germany was temporarily located in the Mediapark ; House 8a is now the seat of the Photo Academy Cologne and the Photo School Cologne.
Addresses
The business or residential address for all buildings is "Im MediaPark (number)", 50670 Cologne.
The chronological order is therefore:
In MediaPark 1: Cinedom, In MediaPark 2: Musictower, In MediaPark 3: MediaPark Klinik, In MediaPark 4: Forum in MediaPark, In MediaPark 5, In MediaPark 6: Literaturhaus, In MediaPark 7: KOMED-Haus, In MediaPark 8: KölnTurm , In MediaPark 8a, in MediaPark 8b: NH Hotel MediaPark, in MediaPark 10: condominiums, in MediaPark 11–15: residential queue, in MediaPark 16: GEW substation.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Newspaper of the Association of German Railway Administration, Volume 51, 1911, p. 1242
- ↑ Ullrich Prowollik, Bunte Kinowelt replaces the coal miners , in: Die Welt from July 1, 1996
- ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger from July 1, 1998, The long way from vision to reality
- ↑ Melanie Contoli / Martin W. Schmied, Der Medienstandort Nordrhein-Westfalen , 2000, p. 66
- ↑ Werner Schäfke, Cologne City Museum, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle (ed.): The new Cologne 1945–1995 . (Exhibition volume of the Cologne City Museum in the Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle Cologne, April 22 to August 18, 1995). Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-927396-62-1 , p. 306-307 .
- ↑ a b Ulf Brychcy, Ludwig Siegele: Cathedral of the future . In: The time . No. May 21 , 1988 ( zeit.de ).
- ↑ Wolfgang Till Busse: Modern Architecture in Cologne 1990-2010 . Gaasterland-Verlag, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-935873-37-6 , p. 80 .
- ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger from September 24, 2001, play spaces, spaces in between
- ↑ ZEIT ONLINE from June 14, 1996, The Mediapark Cologne is an expensive dream
- ↑ Wolfgang Till Busse: Modern Architecture in Cologne 1990-2010 . Gaasterland-Verlag, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-935873-37-6 , p. 78 .
- ↑ Stefan Köhler, Development of the Transport Infrastructure in a Mobile Society: Depicted on the functional and urban change in significance of the train stations , 2007, p. 77 (PDF; 996 kB)
- ↑ Jürgen Wilhelm, Das Große Köln-Lexikon , 2008, p. 308
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 52.8 " N , 6 ° 56 ′ 39.4" E