(From left to right: Mosquito, Gemini, Mad Max and Medusa. Photo by Christiane Eisler.)

When Jardinators have lived out their usefulness, they apparently go out to pasture in Ferropolis.

Located right in the middle of a former open-pit mine near the city of Dessau, in Bauhaus country, it is part open air museum and part multimedia venue inhabited by monolithic machines, perhaps belonging to the same species that had turned the surrounding landscape into a post-industrial desert.


(The Big Wheel. Photo by Christiane Eisler.)


(Mosquito. Photo by Christiane Eisler.)

Meant to be “an ominous monument and symbol of the extensive exploitation of the countryside and the ecological consequences of doing so,” this City of Iron “also represents a new start in dealing with nature and the countryside. It is an attempt, at the end of an epoch, to create new perspectives for a landscape depleted by industrial exploitation. It is also an attempt to find answers to what are currently two of the most frequently asked questions: where is structural change in the region leading, and what will a post-industrial cultural landscape look like?”

To both questions, Peter Latz has some great answers at Landshaftspark Duisburg-Nord.

And of course, there's Niall Kirkwood's Manufactured Sites. It's no coffee table book, and maybe a little bit technical for the lay person, but it's an incredibly important book.


(Neon night at Ferropolis. Photo by Andre Kehrer.)

Meanwhile, we read that there are only five mechano-titans. Surely that isn't enough. There should be at least 1,000, either arranged like the formal aeronautical gardens at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base or irregularly, an inorganic forest waiting for Bangladeshi migrant loggers and for descendants of the Brothers Grimm to pen new fairy tales.