Povel water town
The Wasserstadt Povel is an urban and architecturally high-quality, high-quality residential area in the center of Nordhorn on the former factory site of the textile factory Ludwig Povel & Co., which went bankrupt in 1979 .
On the new district, which was created in several construction phases, there are townhouses, service housing complexes, residential and commercial buildings, a museum, a cultural center, a panoramic mountain and a park.
The restoration of this 18-hectare urban wasteland occupied the city of Nordhorn over a period of almost 29 years (from 1987 to 2008). The project is a model for which the city of Nordhorn has earned recognition.
The two other inner-city building land projects in Nordhorn benefited from the experience: the NINO business park and the Rawe site on the former factory premises of the textile companies Nino and Rawe, which were also lost .
History of origin
The medium-sized town of Nordhorn, located in northwest Germany on the Dutch border, was shaped by the textile industry for more than 100 years . At the beginning of the 1960s, the three large, directly competing textile factories of Povel , Rawe and NINO alone employed around 12,000 people - 80 percent of all industrial employees in Nordhorn, who occupied large inner-city areas for their factories, workshops and storage facilities.
The structural change of the globalization that started in the 1970s and the resulting economic upheaval in the textile industry also left deep marks on the social structure and appearance of the city, which housed the three large factory sites and a number of smaller ones in the city center. The textile factory Povel & Co. was located on a huge area that is directly connected to the old town and the Vecht island. In 1979 Povel was the first of the three textile factories to be closed, in 1994 the former global textile company NINO had to close its factory gates and in 2001 Rawe, the last of the once large Nordhorn textile factories, ceased production.
What remained were huge and almost continuously heavily contaminated industrial wastelands in the inner city area. The work in the textile factories and the careless handling of chemical resources led to large-scale contamination of the soil of an initially unknown extent. In addition to the economic consequences and a completely new urban development situation, the closure of the textile factories also resulted in major environmental problems.
Povel area
The bankruptcy of Ludwig Povel GmbH & Co. in 1979 resulted in a huge wasteland in the city center - only a few steps away from the pedestrian zone in the city center and with an area of around 18 hectares larger than the historic old town on the Vecht island. Not only because of the central location, but also because of the direct access to the Vechte and the associated connection to the Nordhorn-Almelo Canal as well as the proximity to the recreation area on the Vechtesee , it was the most attractive location of all the abandoned industrial areas in Nordhorn and offered great potential for a positive inner city development.
Due to the exposed location of the area, its availability was seen by the Nordhorn City Council as a “unique opportunity for urban development”. That is why the city bought most of the site at the beginning of 1980 and had all buildings demolished except for the striking Povelturm (the former staircase of the spinning mill), two factory halls and the former administration building. The preserved buildings were placed under monument protection.
There was initially no suspicion of contamination of the soil and the groundwater by contaminated sites from textile production. It was not until 1985, when the environmental issue of contaminated sites in general began to attract the general public (the Federal Soil Protection Act , for example, only dates from 1998), that a first suspicion arose and soil samples were commissioned. It turned out that the site was contaminated with a variety of pollutants and that building, let alone residential development, could not be carried out without further ado. To make matters worse, the textile company, when expanding the site through leveling work, had partially carried away its own sources of pollutants and distributed them over a large area. Paint sludge, slag, heavy metals, oils, tars, chlorinated hydrocarbons and mineral oil hydrocarbons have been detected in numerous places on the former Povel site. Two old arms of the Vechte were filled with highly contaminated production waste as well as building rubble and bulky waste in order to gain additional space for the expansion of the production facilities and ancillary buildings. A former industrial waste dump was also found on the site.
In 1987, a newly developed type of soil remediation of the extensive factory premises began. The project was funded and evaluated from 1987 to 1991 as a model project in the research field “Urban Ecology and Environmentally Friendly Building” in the federal research program “Experimental Housing and Urban Development” (ExWoSt).
Soil remediation
The then common solution for the rehabilitation of contaminated soils was to excavate the entire soil and dispose of it or store it in a hazardous waste dump . For the Povel site, this complete soil replacement would have meant that around 200,000 cubic meters of soil would have had to be excavated, transported and disposed of. Due to the immense logistical effort and the extreme financial burden for the city of Nordhorn, this solution turned out to be neither practicable nor feasible: 7 million truck kilometers would have had to be estimated for transporting the excavated material to the landfill alone.
Therefore, it was decided to use a new, ecologically and economically balanced area recycling, a renovation concept based on the latest scientific findings, which analyzed the soil on the spot and initiated cleaning on the spot.
The renovation began in 1987 and was estimated at around 6 million German marks . In the course of the work, additional contaminated sites were discovered, which significantly increased costs. Soil that was contaminated with organic compounds was cleaned microbiologically, heavy metals were treated in a combined physical-chemical-biological process and soils heavily contaminated with heavy metals were cleaned in a so-called floor wash. The former industrial waste dump of the Povel company was secured against leaching and encapsulated. A park landscape near the settlement emerged from it.
Less than one percent of the soil therefore had to be taken to a hazardous waste dump or burned. Ultimately, a total of 18,754,000 euros was spent on the renovation.
financing
The total investment in the former Povel factory site was around 160 million euros. Most of this investment was raised by private investors. With a volume of 18,754,000 euros (the renovation costs), the public funds corresponded to a share of 11.7 percent of the total investment.
Quarter
A new district with living space for 750 people as well as office and commercial space for 400 workplaces was created in four construction phases. The creation of several additional watercourses in the form of canals gave the district its recognition value and an increased quality of stay, living, living and working, which resulted in the designation of the redevelopment area as the “Wasserstadt Povel”.
The architecture is characterized by strong specifications, so-called "diversity in unity", with grid-shaped lines of the traffic routes and watercourses, the same color scheme, continuous construction height and dense development and is characterized by clear geometric structures with similar proportions and light perforated facades with continuous construction heights . 80 percent of the apartments are designed as two-storey terraced or multi-family houses and face the water, supplemented by just five single-family houses and a multi-storey senior citizens' residence.
With 67.3 inhabitants per hectare , the population density in the Povel district is more than twice as high as in the rest of the city center. The integration of social housing and old people's housing resulted in a heterogeneous population structure, with rental apartments predominating, primarily for single and two-person households.
Shops have not emerged, but the pedestrian zone is only a few steps away.
Mixed development
in the new
Residential area:
One / two family houses
Apartment buildings
Senior housing complexes
office building
pyramid
The pyramid, also called Povelberg, is located in the eastern area of the redevelopment area and is now used as a public green area. The encapsulation of the former industrial waste dump represented the final safety measure of the renovation project.
The high concentration of pollutants in the stored soils requires permanent use restrictions. The part of the pyramid attached to the surface was enclosed by a protective layer made of unpolluted soil, sand and foils. Encapsulating the contaminated soil is intended to prevent seepage water from being fed into the surrounding groundwater.
The top of the pyramid is walkable and accessible through a staircase.
Povel Tower
The Povel Tower was built in 1906 as the “dust and water tower” of the Povel spinning mill. The 26-meter-high tower of the former factory was preserved as a historic building and now houses a textile museum, which reminds of the earlier use of the area.
In October 1996 the Nordhorn City Museum showed its first permanent exhibition. Since April 2011, the Povelturm has been dedicated to the city's history. “Time travel Nordhorn: border town - textile town - water town” is the title of the permanent exhibition.
Under the glass roof of the spinning tower, the visitor has a panoramic view of Nordhorn. The "HOCH5", bar and café, has its place on the last two floors and in the glass dome.
Old weaving mill
On the northern border of the planning area, 300 meters from the Povelturm, is the former weaving mill of the Povel company, built in 1949/50, which was converted from 1997 to 1999 into the Alte Weberei cultural and event center. The conversion cost 2,441,930 euros.
The old weaving mill consists in particular of a multifunctional hall with outbuildings, where trade fairs, exhibitions, markets, galas, discos, concerts, demonstrations or meetings take place and where the Grafschafter brewery is also housed.
In September 1999, the Nordhorn City Museum opened a “museum factory” under the motto “textile production live” in the former premises of the “weaving mill”. There, the entire production process of the textile industry (with the exception of fabric finishing and finishing) is shown on an area of 400 square meters: The processing of the raw material cotton is carried out on functional textile machines from the former large companies Povel , Nino and Rawe from 1950 to 1990 of a yarn in the spinning mill and the processing of thousands of yarn threads into a fabric in the weaving mill. On the weekends, former employees of these textile companies demonstrate the machinery, explain how it works and report on the working world of the textile factories.
Reception and conclusion
From 1996 onwards, the “Povel” renovation project received international attention. At the UN exhibition “Habitat II” in Istanbul, the implementation of the renovation was named “Best Practice Project”. In the years that followed, renovation experts and urban planners from all over the world visited the newly built inner-city residential area. During the over 20-year renovation process, the former Povel site was repeatedly a topic for the press. Not only regional and national newspapers, but also specialist magazines and journals reported on the renovation process. These included the “Deutsche Bauzeitung” and “Zeit”. Most of the articles were published in the locally based Grafschafter Nachrichten (GN). The reporting began in 1980, when it appeared in the GN z. B. Articles like "A Unique Opportunity for Urban Development" and "Povel Terrain Contaminated?" On the occasion of the 625th anniversary of the city of Nordhorn, the article “Piece of textile heritage causes a sensation worldwide” was published in 2004.
In a 1997 competition organized by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Women, Labor and Social Affairs, the project was recognized as one of the 17 best entries. In 1998, it received the “Fair Play Prize” from the Landesbausparkassen for future and needs-oriented building land policy and in 1999 the German City Prize. In 2002 the quarter development received the DIFA award for innovative urban planning and sustainable development.
literature
- Henning Woltering: Urban redevelopment measure Federal model project: "Wasserstadt Povel". Final documentation. City of Nordhorn, 2008.
- D. Schuller, H. Ludewig, P. Rongen, S. Berek, D. Straßer: Model location Povel: Strategies for the rehabilitation of old locations. In: Christa Knorr, Thomas v. Schell (Ed.): Microbial Pollutant Degradation: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Springer DE, 1997. ISBN 3-642-59134-5 . Pp. 334-349.
Web links
- werkstatt-stadt.de: Nordhorn: Wasserstadt Povel
- DIE ZEIT 1985: Consequences of a bankruptcy
- Nordhorn City Museum: Povel or the 'Take Off' of the Nordhorn textile industry
- Büro Stelzig: Significance of urban waters for the urban development of Nordhorn (with many photos, plans and illustrations)
- Detlef Wilkens: Time bombs among us. When the industry goes ... The Povel Project. In: BiOkular, 1994, 9, pp. 4-7.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.findcity.de/?m=stadt-nordhorn-buergerinfo-4852905&p=00000002
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Grafschafter Nachrichten of January 28, 1980
- ↑ Henning Woltering: Urban redevelopment measure Federal model project: "Wasserstadt Povel" . P. 13
- ↑ Henning Woltering: Urban redevelopment measure Federal model project: "Wasserstadt Povel" . P. 33
- ↑ Henning Woltering: Urban redevelopment measure Federal model project: "Wasserstadt Povel" . P. 34
- ↑ Henning Woltering: Urban redevelopment measure Federal model project: "Wasserstadt Povel" . P. 34
- ↑ Stadtmuseum: Our museum café ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Henning Woltering: Urban redevelopment measure Federal model project: "Wasserstadt Povel" . P. 34
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 '57.7 " N , 7 ° 4' 30.9" E