a personal view, by marjan

Leipzig

A sunny day, a great travel, the beginning of the discovery of a redeveloped post-industrial city. With our eyes wide open and our camera ready to shoot, we started our day. Although the city was developed as a post-industrial city, it is noawadays transformed into a commercial and attractive city.

We went there, to look for the roots of the city: so our desteny is clear: industry. After a long tram-ride, we arrived in the Messe-area, where we were waiting for half an hour to get to our final destination: the BMW-factory. The stop in the Messe-area showed us a nice sample of contemporary architecture, offices and congress-centra were rising up from the ground! But since it was a Saturday, the site was deserted. A typical German thing became very clear, people work during the week, and take of in the weekends, this results in a desolated erea. Travelling further to BMW, we took a bus trough the fields surrounding Leipzig, small villages, or even rather groups of houses, rised up in the horizon, and disappeared in the same way they appeared, till we saw the next one rising in the horizon. Finally we arrived at the factory, which was also deserted (since it’s a Saturday). The arrival at the building, designed by Zaha Hadid was pretty nice though. The way she designed the parking lot and the whole site made that the visitor got to see the factory from different angles, but never frontal, since  there is not really of frontal side in the facade she designed.

After making a lot of (architectural) photo’s, we returned to the living hart of Leizig, and started mixing ourselves with the comsumers of the city, who keep the hart of the city beating during the day.

After visiting the art/photo gallery, we returned to the city centre. Once we arrived there, we realised, that the living hart of the city started beating on a lower rythm onces the shops are closed. That’s only for a few hours though, because a few hours later the sparking nightlive gave a new boost to the city and that’s when the hart starts beating at a higher rythm again!