the water tank hall of the ironworks in völklingen.
one of the most epic trips i did last year was this one to the ironworks of völklingen, which is an industrial heritage site in the state of saarland - world-famous even, because of its architectural importance and how massive it is with its immense proportions. i love these old industrial structures a LOT, they're super impressive & awe-inspiring. it amazes me that people over 100 years ago were able to construct giant structures like this and create the foundation stones our modern world is now build upon. the rusty colours of the old blast furnaces, all the braces and struts, the old air pump machines... it creates an almost dystopian place, something straight out of an apocalyptic future. it was mesmerizing to finally set foot upon this place. i basically couldn't stop myself from ooh-ing and aah-ing!
the ironworks were first established in 1873 and became the factory you know today under the very influential guidance of carl röchling and his family. it operated until 1986. it shut down, because iron ore production wasn't so lucrative anymore. the whole area of almost 8 hectare floor space is still part of saarstahl - which is the name of the company these days and it is completely used as museum, musical venue & a place for learning & exploring. there's even a small paradise inside those grounds - an overgrown, lush park of sorts.
i visited the ironworks together with a saarland native, my best friend l., who always had raved about its amazing structures and made the biggest effort trying to convince me to finally check it out! okay, it didn't need much convincing, i had driven by it so often on former trips to saarland, that it always had been at the back of my mind. the reason why we finally made the leap to go visit it was the fact that there was a banksy exhibit going on, and as we are both lovers of fantastic street art it was a done deal. it also really helped that every two years there's a street art festival taking place here, too, which decorates the place with lots of fantastic art installations and we knew there would be lots of those to look at. the völklinger hütte has several exhibitions going on at the same time and there was also one about german sculpturist ottmar hörl, whose plastic figurines are quite popular here in germany.
well, let's just say, we didn't spend only a couple of hours in there - no. i think we basically spent a whole day inside and i would've probably stayed a little longer, if there hadn't been fresh strawberries waiting for us at l.'s parent's place. that really made our already super awesome day even more perfect.
i hope to return here someday ( as i hope to return to lots of places i have visited in the past, lol ), especially since there should be a new urbanart! biennale this year ( 2019 ) which means: new street art!
but anyway, enough talking, i took way too many pictures and this is going to be long, i can assure you, so let's enjoy this special place, right?
grass sprouting out of some sort of chimney. nature - as you will see later - is slowly reclaiming the historic site.
the water tank building was one of the most complex concrete constructions back in 1917 when it was erected.
hot blast stoves as seen from the former mechanics alley.
inside the blowers hall you can find these old air pump machines. historic industrial behemoths of yore.
the sculptures you see here were following you around all over the premises of the ironwork. they were created by ottmar hörl, a rather well-known german artist whose installations can be found all over germany ( i've seen his gutenberg sculptures in eltville even, which is a small town not far away from my home town of wiesbaden. ) this installation is called 'second life - 100 arbeiter ( 100 labourers )'. there were more of his sculptures around, older work - on display because there was a big exhibition about him in the blowers hall.
a demag air pump machine - quite impressive thing, to be honest.
also, these wolves guarding a very unexciting looking door. they, too, are works of ottmar hörl.
a view down into the blowers hall.
they surely looked a tad bit creepy, those labourers.
a little snippet of the ironworks blast furnace range from above the roofs and the overpass from the blowers hall to the sintering plant. the brownish-red building is the former burden hall, where the ferrodrom is situated - which is sort of a science center where you can make experiments.
crossing the overpass.
sintering plant from outside. inside they mixed various components & metal with heat into tiny little compressed granules that would later be brought to the blast furnaces which would continue working those granules into liquid iron. sintering is difficult to explain, if you want to have a more detailed description, check out the wikipedia article ;).
chic railcars like these brought the raw materials into the ironworks.
inside the sintering hall in one of the adjoined corridors. the light was so good because of tinted window glass!
i cannot, for the life of me, explain to you what these machines are meant to do, but it must be about the sintering process.
i guess this was some kind of a storage or electricity room.
maybe was used to granulate the heatened metal mass? i should've probably read more about the general process here, but... we kind of ran through this exhibition! i wasn't that interested in the process, after all, and more into the aesthetics of it. also, we wanted to see the banksy 'dismaland and other stories' exhibit more.
those rooms were pure delight for everyone who likes creepy, dark, rusty places. good that i happen to be one of those people ;)
electric cabinet. there's something about these things, that always make me look at them as if they would hold magic tools.
double vision? this room was strange, but beautifully lit.
some of the windows inside the sintering plant were tinted a rusty red colour which put natural filters on the outside! super cool detail.
i wish i could tell you more about the purpose of those machines and constructions, but i am afraid you need to deal with just looking and wondering about the curious forms and dimensions.
despite being inoperative for over 30 years now, you can still find old spirits and souls in the ironworks. this old, sleepy dude was filling the hall with a sense of calmness and wisdom. ( i hope you can see him, too? )
we moved on to the burden hall, where they collected the burden for the blast furnace process. those long ass overpasses created really dramatic photo opportunities.
i also climbed up onto the second floor of the burdening hall which revealed the skeleton-like structure of the building. below, you could look at the banksy exhibition.
loved these corrugated plastic panels serving as light-bearers.
entering the world of banksy's dismaland. dismaland was kind of a parody amusement park (created and initiated by banksy himself ) that had its exhibition grounds in the english city of weston-super-mare in england. banksy created several works for this park and also invited lots of other artists to contribute to the installation. it was basically an amusement park for adults, with macabre & dismal ( important component of the dismaland description ) attractions to look at - a place where the bleakness & ugliness of modern society was presented in a thought-provoking manner. it turned the perception of what an amusement park is on its head and showed a different side of the coin - a darker and more broken one. the exhibition at the ironworks presented photos of the project, which were shot by barry cawston - who basically was the main contributor to the exhibit in these halls.
more overpass goodness.
the burden hall was full of good light and perspectives!
sometimes a patch of nature surprised you while wandering around the premises.
what you can see here are lorries containing the burden mass. this stuff would later be transported to the blast furnaces and fused into liquid iron.
these halls were super dark but dramatically lit! quite an eerie space. by the way, before we really looked at the exhibition of dismaland we decided to check out the ground floor first, because obviously it was a damn cool place! we also decided to visit the ferrodrome space center. photos of the exhibition will be shown later, but first let's enjoy some more views of the actual burden grounds.
the exhibitions about the process were really cool, and even though i didn't read everything, walking through those well-lit halls was already an experience.
these corridors represented several elements used in the iron making process such as fire ( seen here ) and water ( the blue corridor far in the back ). there were also sounds accompanying these, like the crackle of burning fire or the dripping of water drops.
stepped outside to witness a special shadow play! lots of the structures in the ironworks made me think of skeletons, which was amazing and created an end-of-the-world feeling.
walking towards the science center.
an old lavatory. notice the forgotten shoes, which made the room look forlorn and lost to time and space.
i didn't make a lot of photos inside the ferrodrome, but i definitely had to shoot this room. drowsed in orange it was kind of surreal!
these spaces were full of electric overhead tracks, which transported the burden up to the blast furnaces.
the places where nature and industrial construction intertwined were my favourites!
finally found our way back to the dismaland exhibit.
i'm pretty sure, judging from the photos of that amusement park, that the project was amazing! if i had known something like this existed in any seaside city in my country, you can be sure i would've made it a must to go visit a crazy place like this!
works of mike ross ( the big rig jig ) and banksy ( the orca whale jumping out of a toilet through a hoop).
i don't have a lot of close-ups of the images, i guess i was more intigued with the exhibition space, haha!
enjoying the carousel ride at dismaland!
there were walls with hand prints on them - which was mysterious and spooky.
someone found it inspiring enough to create a smiley face.
black is beautiful - says artist jef aerosol, and i couldn't agree more!
little peanut doing something mischievous?
there were so many nooks and crannies to discover.
continuing our little walk through the ironworks - slowly reaching the paradise ( which was formerly part of the coking plant )
you could actually climb the blast furnace group - but we didn't do that as my friend does not like to be so high above ground. i don't like to force things onto people, and i also don't like to leave behind my friends so climbing these giants will have to wait until my next visit ;)
there were slides installed for kids. the whole area is basically a huge playground for small and big kids alike.
oh those rusty metals, those skeleton features, those steampunk aesthetics ❤ i couldn't get enough of this sight!
to charge the furnaces they built charging platforms and coke lifts who transported all the materials to their respective workstations.
the pathways to the coking plant. this plant was the most derelict part of the ironworks, and re-purposed into a little park, overgrown with plants, trees & bushes.
which you can see here. this was by far my favourite part, because i feel like ruins & nature do possess such a special magic when paired together. it was really quiet in here, very few people stumbled around and you could actually take deep breaths of relaxation here as most are attracted to the dramatic blast furnaces and the engines.
i don't know the purpose of these steel frameworks, but it surely was a nice sculptural element. maybe they were clad in iron once and served as quenching towers.
and always, the labourers following you around quietly.
the oldest building on the site is the 1896 coal tower - the rusty round thing on the right.
we now entered a world full of hidden magic, remains of past urban art contributions.
view through a hole in the wall onto the coke oven batteries.
some of the art installations were not made to stand the test of time. like this one from artist romain froquet.
lush greens & corroding metals. i don't know about you guys, but this view is eyecandy to me.
old derelict electricity devices. sometimes i almost could imagine these places in their heydays, with labourers operating them and shuffleing around in these crammed hallways.
upon closer inspection you can find out that these things are actually thermostats & ammoniac gas cupellers.
isn't it wonderful how nature always finds a way to grow back onto surfaces that are known to have no nutritious soil to actually help develop a growing process?
meet the work of rubin and petas, two saarland street artists. rubin created the tibetan dancers and petas the huge lettering. i think this was probably the best graffiti in the whole space.
i don't know the background and meaning of this graffiti, but i love that it has this dark exotic twist.
the wall is a memorial, which means that the graffiti is pretty much safe from being destroyed... until the next biennale comes around, maybe?
the other tibetan dancer of the mural.
and the whole graffiti.
sprouting forth 🌱
these dudes fit so well into the surroundings that it almost looks like they've been engraved into those walls since forever, despite them slowly losing their adherence. these are ghost of the past, at least in my mind. they were created by levalet. i must say, i liked these a lot because of the aforementioned perfect fit - they are telling a story and it's your fantasy that needs to imagine it vividly.
tape art by r1. hypnotizing to say the least!
another ghost having a small rest. another levalet piece.
i think this was done by jef aerosol, the dude who also created the 'black is beautiful' mural inside the burden hall.
work by joachim romain.
some buildings i can't identify anymore. this is one of them. it seems to me, that it's been forgotten even by the people who made the ironworks into a heritage site - judging from all the broken windows.
grids & shards, leaves & gears.
futuring by eva & adele. i feel very strong feelings about this neon lamp, because the whole site of the ironworks to me is some kind of future place, even though it is rooted in the past and will probably never get any future additions. but it's like an experimentational field for artists and something that will help them to create a future with their work.
deep inside the paradise. i felt so at peace in these surroundings ❤ the art in the back is by olivia di bona. unfortunately i was unable to shoot a proper closeup and i also couldn't find any online.
that murky water was kind of intriguing.
old walls no one knows anything about anymore.
the whole coking area was so magnificently derelict, i can't even find the right words to describe it. there was just a huge buzz in my bones upon looking at this paradise.
green porticos.
hidden inside the tiniest corner: ammor aba bakr's 'happy yemen'.
this one was super interesting as it was carved into the concrete wall. the artist VHILS aka alexandre farto is surely taking chiseling to a head-blowing level. the details were SO GOOD.
i HAD to take close-up photos. it's incredible what you can do with concrete, an imaginative mind & some chisels & gouges.
the process is called bas-relief carving and goes back to the ancient egypts! i must say, i absolutely fell in love with this modern version, though.
it just is so effective!
these three graces were created by YZ. it's called women from another century.
we slowly made our way through lush overgrowth, enjoying the near-solitude we were gifted. i could've stayed here forever.
but we had to leave sooner or later...
... so we returned to the areas again, that were less green. in exchange to that we were treated with some more mural art. on the right, some more levalet ghosts and on the left a piece from artist hendrik beikirch ( or ECB ).
a beautiful portrait of an old woman: 'rakouch timallizene'.
these ravens are also levalet pieces. i kind of grew more and more enamoured with this artist the more i found his work hiding everywhere.
behind the windows where the raven hung out there was this control room and more levalet work.
shall we torch the earth? this cool vehicle probably shoved the coke into the oven batteries.
on our way out i discovered some more control mechanisms.
i have the distinct feeling that the thing inside the tunnel will wake up in the future and move out of its resting place, overrunning everything in its way.
molten alarm signals.
some more pipes & tubes leading around and to and away from the blast furnace range.
at times i even thought: is this real? am i dreaming? what is this fantasy place? am i in a different dimension?
the best picture i could get of the blast furnace range - the massiveness of it was almost smothering, but in a positive way.
warning: to clean clothes with compressed air while wearing them means mortal danger through intestine injuries.
damn, i really can't imagine myself working at a place like this that put up warnings like that. almost horrifying.
we passed by the skeleton shadow area again and bid our goodbyes to the ironworks of völklingen. but not before eating some delish food at one of the little restaurants around here ( cafe umwalzer - which offered saarland specialties galore - and really tasty at that! )
one of the most strange things i've seen on the grounds of the ironworks, was this vehicle. was it a gondola of some sorts, one of those that are part of big wheels? or was it a shelter? i really couldn't make anything out of it, but it felt like something that would have a purpose in dystopian future, maybe a fucked up version of a kiosk. i leave you here to have a little riddle session, and maybe YOU can tell me what this thing might be in the comments? i hope you enjoyed this little tour of this remarkable historic industrial behemoth and maybe it inspires you to check it out some time in the future! i feel that it is a complete must if you are ever in the area.
( if you have reached the end of this post, props to you! )
Comments