GaLaBau with ambition
You will again find ideas for the design of urban, open and green spaces from September 14 at the GaLaBau trade fair for gardening and landscaping in the German city of Nuremberg. This year products will be exhibited in the fields of "construction machinery and equipment", "materials and components for construction and maintenance", "playgrounds, leisure grounds, sports grounds" and "construction, maintenance and management of golf courses", etc. This also includes new products, such as the barbecue site "Donauwelle" (Danube wave) of SW Umwelttechnik Österreich; it is completely made of concrete, which applies just as well to the barbecue grill in the center and the seats and the tables arranged in a semicircle around the same. "Donauwelle" resulted from the Concrete Design Award of the Austrian cement industry and the Association of the Austrian Concrete and Precast Plants (see BFT International 10/2013, p. 10-11).
Coinciding with the GaLaBau trade fair, this edition of your BFT International trade magazine comprises a column on the topic of "Garden and Landscape Construction/Thoroughfares" (see pp. 30 to 45), too. Starting from page 70 onwards you will find an outstanding example for the design of an urban space: Fifteen years after the attack against the Twin Tower office building at the World Trade Center, "Liberty Park" in New York was opened to the public. The striking edgings of the large planting beds, the so-called "planters", made of white ultra-high performance concrete, and the expressive paver and slab patterns provide the park situated in the immediate vicinity of the 9/11 Memorial with a quite unique character. The companies Ducon and Dyckerhoff were significantly involved in the design of "Liberty Park".
By the way, prototypes of the so-called "planters" could already be seen in Germany some years ago, on the occasion of the International Garden Show (igs) in Hamburg in 2013. Hence, it is always worthwhile to have a closer look at garden and landscape construction trade fairs and events, which are supposed to be of regional interest only. The one or other idea might gain international acceptance later.
