A cooperation between orange.edge and Platforma 9,81

Heimat is a German expression that can hardly be translated into other languages. It provokes images of idealised landscapes. But Heimat is also a concrete experience. Heimat are the places of childhood, places in which one lives and which are familiar. Heimat is a place of longing as well as a place of everyday life.

For a long time Heimat in the Ruhrgebiet was defined by the coal and steel industry. Factories, coal mining settlements, the rhythm of collective working hours, life in allotment gardens but also mine disasters created an idea of Heimat that was difficult to understand by outsiders: Heimat in the Ruhrgebiet never corresponded to an ideal. Heimat is an experience of life that can handle contradictions. Heimat is not static, but changes with places and patterns of living.

New places of living are developing within the Ruhrgebiet. Along the A40 between Dortmund Duisburg, the close relationship between highway and city created places that are often associated with the term periphery in a negative way. In everyday language, periphery means surrounding. In urban planning and urban geography the term is used as an antipode for centre. It describes places which are not within the centre of space, attention or power. Periphery is a marginal location, residual, dependent space.

But this not-being-in-the-centre can also be seen as a quality. The architect Julia Bolles Wilson describes periphery as a »…contemporary feeling in which we feel good. Its latent qualities are a kind of freedom. It is an non-hierarchic field in which we may move, and it offers a kind of anonymity cities can no longer offer«.

So what is the periphery? What are the characteristics, features and qualities of places apart?

As part of Peripherie3000. Strategic Platform for Networked Centers a project by Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund, in cooperation with Zagreb Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000 and relations, »Heimat: Autobahn« shows how the Ruhrgebiet developed along the A40, beyond the dualism of centre and periphery. The social and economic meaning of 20 daily living places will be visualised. These places are not without contradictions and conflicts yet they still display a cultural and design potential that is essential for understanding the development of the Ruhrgebiet as a regional urban landscape.