Every design for Bottrop

Coal made Bottrop. The town grew up around its pits in the second half of the nineteenth century, became a centre of mining and the railways, and still bears the marks: the land has sunk in places, and the spoil heaps of the mines now rise as hills above the Ruhr.

There is a homely, unpretentious feel to the place that people who grew up here describe without much fuss. The neo-Renaissance city hall is the town's emblem, the Quadrat museum shows the work of Josef Albers alongside local history, and the Rhine–Herne Canal marks the southern edge towards Essen. Up north, Kirchhellen still feels like a separate small town, which it was until the reforms of the seventies briefly merged Bottrop, Gladbeck and Kirchhellen into a city nicknamed GlaBotKi. English visitors may be surprised to learn that Bottrop is twinned with Blackpool.

The Tetraeder sums it all up, a landmark among the heaps at Beckstraße, Prosperstraße and Rheinbaben, where you can stand in the wind with the whole region spread out below. That view is what you take home from Bottrop.