DTP: With its sports facility development plan, the town of Herten has identified suitable sites for targeted conversion and thus laid the foundations for sustainable development of its sports infrastructure. One of these sports sites is the playing field on Kuhstraße which has thus far been used for club football and is now being opened up to the urban district in exemplary fashion through further development as a public, multifunctional sports and leisure park.
The new design and the diverse usage options aim to get people of all different ages interested and enthused about sport and exercise in daily urban life. At the same time, the park offers clubs (football, shooting, handball, etc.) and the FBW (the Freizeit- und Begegnungsstätte Westerholt, the area’s community centre) new, improved facilities and a platform to address potential groups of members. The new sports park is becoming an attractive key space for sporting activity in the district and beyond.
The basic concept for the new park-like design is the incorporation of new and existing playing fields and sports facilities into the landscaping and linking these up to the forest backdrop that sets the overall scene using arbitrary groups of trees. Gentle modelling of the ground (recycling of the excavated material) breaks up and enlivens the open spaces, demarcates the different fields and incorporates specific exercise facilities. Thus, the whole site becomes an exercise park that is an attractive space for sport and leisure.
Design: Planungsbüro DTP Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH
Client: Herten Town Council
Project location: Germany, Herten
Planning and realisation: 2016-2019
Photography: Nikolai Benner
