Chapter 2 of 18
Federal Environment Agency, Dessau By Sauerbruch Hutton, 2005
MS: It's a region which used to be totally agricultural until the 1930s and then it was heavily industrialised during the fascist period. Heavy industries were moved there, away from the French border into the centre of Germany, for armament basically. And so there was steel industry, there was chemical industry, and during the East German time these industries were continued. So the area belongs to a landscape which is called the chemical triangle, which originally would just refer to the type of industry, but as a matter of fact, by the time the unification happened, it could also refer to the state of the landscape, it was totally looted. Most of these industries were closed down, the area suffered very badly from unemployment, and it had this terrible state of water, air and land. So to move the environmental agency there, both to address these issues, to offer potential jobs for the future, but also to plant a seed for future industries which might offspring from this agency, was already a very environmentally conscious decision.