deutscher landschaftsarchitekturpreis 2021

Deutscher Landschaftsarchitektur-Preis German Landscape Architecture Award

one of the fi rst of its kind to be implemented. It illustrates the concept of these spaces: individu ally designed with more than the original target group in mind. All spaces can be used by differ ent age groups. In the Katzengold playground, where small children dig in the mud for fool’s gold, youths meet up in the evening to practise parkour on a criss-cross of logs. Places are never just for children or youths, never just for adults or athletes. Everyone can try out everything. That’s the motto for all play areas – including the in-situ concrete landscape in Reese Park, which at fi rst glance may look like a skatepark, but is where small children in peddle cars and cyclists are also allowed to race down the craters. The Table Mountains are a meeting place for all. The dimensions, radii and contours of the volcano-like slopes have been designed with the help of experts. Lohaus Carl Köhlmos consulted Ralf Maier landscape architects from Cologne, who specialise in skateparks. The whole thing was constructed by a fi rm whose owners are skaters themselves and who took great care to give the skatepark its fi nal shape and smoothed it by hand. The recipe for success of the Katzengold playground and the skatepark applies to the whole park: each area is a world of experience in its own right, lavishly detailed and challenging for its users – and most importantly, not the norm. It has everything the heart desires, ranging from climbing rocks and trampolines hidden among hedges to climbing structures overgrown by wil lows, and even an outdoor muscle factory in the form of a calisthenics workout area. Again and again, the topography of lawn and tarmac hills entices the young and the old to stray from the path. ‘Come on, you can do it’, a young man on

a bike calls out to his girlfriend, as he builds up momentum and rides down the dark tarmac hill next to the main path. The woman on the folding bike brie fl y hesitates and hurtles after him. It is hard to resist the play landscape’s fascination. The same goes for the large fi eld of grasses with a few loosely scattered trees, a landscape inspired by the American prairies. Only about half the park is regularly mown for sports fi elds, while large areas are left to grow, becoming reminis cent of American landscapes. These steppe meadows are maintained according to a care fully worked out mowing schedule to establish a high diversity of herb species. In this way, huge near-natural areas were created – a paradise for insects. Perennials and steppe grasses are natu rally integrated into this Bavarian prairie. Several thousand square metres of mowable perenni als are the park’s unique feature in the region. Together with the impressive stand of existing trees, which the landscape architects comple mented with species that turn bright red, orange and yellow in autumn, this completes the picture of American landscapes. The new residential neighbourhood on the site of former barracks was slow to take off on Augsburg’s property market, then less competi tive. The city authority and the landscape archi tects decided to build a part of Sheridan Park upfront in order to create an address for the new housing. The fi rst sections of the park were constructed before the building development was even started. ‘It took a fair amount of courage on behalf of the city to go down this path’, Irene Lohaus recalls, ‘but they were open to experimen tation from the start.’ Implementing the park to begin with also meant that public consultation

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