Schüngelberg settlement in Gelsenkirchen
Surrounded by the pit, colliery railway and heap, the Schüngelberg settlement is immediately recognizable as a mining settlement. It combines different architectural styles and settlement concepts from the history of housing for miners and is considered one of the highlights of the IBA Emscher Park, which combines the exemplary renovation of the old building stock with a remarkable new building project.
The Schüngelberg settlement was built between 1897 and 1919 at the foot of an emerging overburden heap according to designs by master colliery builder Wilhelm Johow. The Harpener mining company, which had taken over the Hugo shares in 1896, had four-family houses built with a cross layout on Holthauser Strasse, among other things. The development on Gertrudstraße, for example, which was named after the wife of the works director Alexander Grolmann, is much less strict: the detached, semi-detached and terraced houses, including a gateway and a small square, are arranged into attractive ensembles at the beginning and in the middle of the street the garden city model Godfather. The settlement concept also provided for semi-detached houses for civil servants with up to 130 square meters of living space and a two-storey ten-family house that was built to save on construction costs. An extension concept considered in 1919 was not implemented for financial reasons.
The International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park took up the expansion plans from the past in a modified form: new buildings designed by the Swiss architect Rolf Keller with around 200 apartments for miners now complement the older parts of the settlement. The concept also includes a square with a day-care center and shops, the inclusion of the Rungenberg tailings dump through paths and visual axes and art objects, as well as the natural redesign of the Lanferbach. At the same time, the old building area with 310 apartments was refurbished in line with the preservation order.
