The “Architecture Guide Cologne”, which was published in the same series a year ago, has four hundred pages.

The "Architecture Guide Düsseldorf" takes up eighteen pages more, even though Düsseldorf is only a little more than half as big and less than half as old.

And the current state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia is said to have more to offer architecturally than the proud Colonia?

Andreas Rossmann

Freelance writer in the feuilleton.

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The question is due to the tiresome compulsion to make comparisons in which the unequal Rhine sisters have ritualized their rivalry.

But even the selection creates a skewed situation.

Because while the Cologne author Anselm Weyer does not dare to go beyond the city limits, the Düsseldorf author Klaus Englert also wanders to Neuss, Mettmann or Velbert, where he wrote Gottfried Böhm's Mariendom in Neviges (1968), but also his early church St. Paulus (1955). visited.

"One million trees for Düsseldorf"

Both publications leave behind the conventional architectural guide, which lists buildings worth seeing in encyclopedic form.

Conceptually, they are fundamentally different: Weyer tells the history of the building since it was founded in Rome, Englert devotes himself to "certain characteristic strands (...) that make the state capital unique" and since the early modern period, as Joseph Maria Olbrich, Peter Behrens and Wilhelm Kreis worked here, sign off.

What is older is missing: no (baroque) St. Andrew's Church and no Basilica of St. Margareta in Gerresheim, only an interior shot of Benrath Palace, no Ratinger Tor or Palais Wittgenstein.

The city writes architectural history, and that corresponds to its self-image, only since 1900.

But the future of Düsseldorf began earlier: with the Hofgarten laid out in 1769 and its redesign by Maximilian Wilhelm Weyhe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Englert ties the discourse on ecological urban redevelopment, which defines the Hofgarten as the heart of a "Green City", to its green ribbon for an open garden city, which has been cut further and further.

Christoph Ingenhoven has been on the spot with suggestions for thirty years.

The architect, born in 1960, is the outstanding head of his guild in the city, with which he is emotionally connected, ingenious and strong in discourse.

Englert, who also lets him have his say in the interview (“One million trees for Düsseldorf”), makes him the guarantor of his discussion and doesn’t leave it at that, the phases realized so far,

Only a few single-family houses are considered

The following chapters are arranged historically and thematically: "Early Modernism", which stretches along the Rhine - between Mannesmann's main administration and the Ehrenhof, "New Building" with housing estates and projects inspired by the Bauhaus, "Cultural Landscape", which leads to Neuss (Island Hombroich) and Mettmann (Neanderthal Museum), as well as “Quartiersentwicklung”, which presents several showcase projects and the transformation of the industrial port into a media port, styled with solitaires by star architects.

"Sacred architecture of the modern age" is similarly detailed, where, in addition to Böhm, above all Josef Lehmbrock, Emil Steffann and Hans Schwippert testify to the joy of experimentation of the Archdiocese of Cologne, with which the Protestant competition with works by Hans Junghanns or Hentrich Petschnigg &

Partner (HHP) - but without the Matthäikirche by Wach + Rosskotten - cannot keep up.

"Church institutions" continue the line into the present.

Only a few single-family homes are included, including those that architects such as Schwippert or Bernhard Pfau built for themselves.

The chapter "Modern School Building" could also give more, "Traffic Buildings" ranges from Paul Schneider-Esleben's iconic Haniel garage (1951) to the subway stations of the Wehrhahn line by netzwerkarchitekten (2016).

The American Consulate General by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) marks the beginning of post-war modernism, the three-slice house by HPP (1960) is the exclamation mark of the economic miracle, the NRW state parliament by Eller Moser Walter + Partner (1988) symbolizes citizen-friendly democracy.

The fact that Düsseldorf's affinity for modernity has repeatedly caved in, that formative buildings have been neglected and disfigured, and that ensembles have been cut up by traffic,

is critically noted.

The study house demolished in 1997 by Bernhard Pfau is the most prominent, "the aging opera" is probably the next victim.

Away with the prejudices

About the selection and some assessments can be argued.

The Galerie Schmela by Aldo van Eyck, his only building in Germany, is missing, and whether the much-maligned Friedrich Tamms with the north-south axis and the "bridge family" first freed the city from its narrow structures seems just as debatable as that Significance of the (unmentioned) shopping arcades, especially since their most glamorous, the Kö-Galerie (1986), represents the Talmi side of Düsseldorf modernism.

The editors not only allowed redundancies to slip through: Oswald Mathias Ungers’ middle name is not Maria, and Dani Karavan did not design the synagogue (designed by Zvi Hecker) in addition to the “Garden of Remembrance” in Duisburg’s inner harbor.

But these are negligence.

The well-read and dedicated presentation draws the portrait of a modern, cosmopolitan city.

Anyone who wants to discard their prejudices about Düsseldorf, provincial and ostentatious, is well served with this richly illustrated architecture guide.

Klaus Englert: "Architecture Guide Dusseldorf".

DOM publishers, Berlin 2022, 418 p., ill., br., €38.