- Area: 400 m²
- Year: 2004
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Photographs:Boris Becker
Text description provided by the architects. In the beginning of the 1970s an urban masterplan was devised for Cologne neighborhood of Bayenthal, which has never been applied since then. It was a urbanistic stillborn; the desperate and utterly misdirected attempt to react to a then pressing urban problem: the exodus from the city. Since the early sixties young families moved out of inner city areas into the suburbs and the villages surrounding the cities in order to fulfill their dreams of that uprising prosperous middle class. This dream of young families was the nightmare of every city! Considering various options the city came up with a curious proposal: To prevent more families moving out into the countryside, the countryside has to come into the city. The streets to be widened, fully detached family houses to be constructed akin suburban fabric in an inner city neighborhood and represented in its bureaucratically method, it was possibly the most radical vision that Bayenthal should ever be faced with. With these new sets of regulations the rural was to move into the urban, so that the families would not move out of the city anymore. Not for a single instance, this development plan of Bayenthal was to be applied - even though it is still binding! It was an „anti-speculator-development-plan“ par excellence.
