Museumsbahnsteig - Participative Building Workshop
client: kitev – Kultur im Turm e.V., in cooperation with the LVR-Industriemuseum
type: participatory design-build workshop, mobile sculpture, street furniture
completion: October 2026
key words: sculpture, design-build, participation, pocket park, temporary use, timber, industrial heritage, railway platform
role: project conception, management, building, coordination
A platform in the middle of the main station, an old casting ladle, and a week of rain, wind and sawdust: the first piece of a sculpture park that can move with the platform.
A platform waiting for its train
In the middle of Oberhausen’s main station lies a platform where no trains stop. It is the Museumsbahnsteig, the place where kitev began many years ago with a light installation that made the rails glow. Since then it has been a place for art and events, and for the question of what a station can be beyond waiting and passing through. One of the objects that stands here is a Gießpfanne, a huge casting ladle from the region’s steel industry, part of the collection of the LVR-Industriemuseum.
The platform is not meant to stay like this forever. One day Deutsche Bahn will bring the track back into use. Until then, it offers a rare opportunity: a long, open strip of space in the heart of the city. In Grüner Museumsbahnsteig (Green Museum Platform), a concept I developed as part of the Liveable City fellowship, I imagined it as a linear pocket park, a green, public place in the middle of the station. The building workshop is a first step from that vision towards reality.
No finished design
The workshop began without a finished design, on purpose. The form of the sculpture was to come from the ideas and skills of the participants themselves: students from a vocational college in Oberhausen, together with their teachers.
On the first day, the group walked the platform, studied the place and then sat down together to sketch and discuss. They agreed on what the sculpture should be:
Visible: something people notice from the trains and from the city.
Inviting: a place where you want to sit down.
Playful: a clear signal that this platform is changing.
On the second day, the group went to the Supermarkt der Ideen to look for materials that could be reused, then returned to the platform to measure, test ideas on site, calculate materials and plan the steps of construction.
A ring around the ladle
The design that emerged turns the old ladle into the centre of a new gathering place. A round bench with integrated tables wraps around the casting ladle, framing the industrial object and giving it a new role: it is no longer only something to look at, but the heart of a table where people sit together.
The bench is made of separate timber segments that can be moved and rearranged, as a closed circle around the ladle, in rows for a concert, or in small groups for an event. Like everything built for the future sculpture park, it can be taken apart and rebuilt elsewhere. When the platform has to make way for trains again, the furniture will move with it.
The colour came last, and it was a clear decision: purple-pink. It makes the sculpture impossible to overlook against the grey of the station, and it carries the playfulness the group was looking for. It also announces, loudly and cheerfully, that more transformation is on its way.
Building in the rain
For three days, the group worked on the platform in rain, wind and cold. They prototyped, cut, sanded, painted and screwed, and often did it all again. Between building days there were shared lunches at the Tafelkirche and a buffet from the Refugees’ Kitchen, eaten in the LEERSTAND because the weather had other plans. A camera crew from Berlin and the local press came to document the work.
By the end of the week, most of the segments were standing, and the group plans to return to complete the ring. For the students, it was a challenging week, and one they can be proud of: they did not just build a piece of furniture, but designed a place in the middle of their city, from the first sketch to the final coat of paint.
The bench is the beginning of a sculpture park that will grow step by step on the Museumsbahnsteig, a park built by the people of Oberhausen, for as long as the platform is theirs.
