LUFO Park
Nature meets Culture
An enchanted garden: Behind the Ludwig Forum, nature meets culture. The park had lost much of its quality since the Ludwig Forum was founded in 1991, until the garden artists of atelier le balto set out in 2010 to bring it back into shape. As part of their project LUFO Park, Marc Pouzol, Véronique Faucheur and Marc Vatinel first took care of the overgrown plants. Thomas Virnich’s sculpture at the edge of the grove is now also more visible. Clearly legible spaces and visual references were created or restored. Two platforms in the shady grove and on the sunlit meadow are meeting point, resting zone and stage. Corresponding to this, two “park cells” were created: Petite Nature No 1 in the sunny meadow is planted with ten different plum trees (genus Prunus domestica) and with Asian and European raspberry bushes. In Petite Nature No 2 in the grove, shade plants develop under the older trees.
Every year, the trio and their team travel from Le Havre and Berlin for four weeks of gardening. Interested parties are invited to join in the conversation. Or to participate: for example, the artists planted flower bulbs together with children from a neighboring elementary school.
In recent years, atelier le balto has made an international name for itself with its gardening projects, for example with the green space of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002) or the park of the Villa Romana in Florence (since 2008).
The redesign of the LUFO Park is supported within the framework of the urban district renewal “Soziale Stadt Aachen-Nord” by: European Union Investment in our Future – European Regional Development Fund, Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs, Ministry for Family, Children, Youth and Sports of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, STAWAG.
