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Phoenix Torch
A tribute to an industrial landmark :: Category Archives
Falling Down
Note: Might take a while to load, as all photos fit on one page. Hazy picture quality due to light snow that started just minutes earlier.
Hoerde Torch: 14:01:24 - 14:01:42 in 21 shots (plus a composition) >
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She fell in Grace
Hoerde Torch is dead. She fell in grace, and she took her time: more than 12 seconds, twice as long as predicted. After inclining less than ten degrees, it seemed as she stood still in the air for a short while.
Extensive photo coverage as soon as the negative films are developed and scanned. For now, a short series of digital shots:
hebig.org/photos: She fell in Grace >
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T minus {3, 2, 1}
Three installments in a row:
T minus 3 days
2004-01-23 | Warm afternoon light | Click to enlarge
T minus 2 days
2003-10-18 | The classic view: Remberg I | Click to enlarge
T minus 1 day
2004-01-23 | Remberg II - 22.5 hours to go | Click to enlarge
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What remains
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A final view from Hoerde Torch on what remains of Hoesch Phoenix Steel Mill. The remaining buildings will vanish within the next few weeks. The gallery is a preliminary version that just contains some of the digital shots taken with the Canon PowerShot S40. Hover images for details. A gallery that includes edited digital shots and scanned old-school shots taken with my Nikon and Mamiya cameras will follow at a later point.
A final view from Hoerde Torch >
BUMMER
The cropped image did not show in Exploder due to a missing square bracket - bummer, fixed
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T minus 4 days
2002-03-10 | East meets West: Sleeping Phoenix Steel Mill seen from Phoenix Blast Furnace 5 | Click to enlarge
IN THE PRESS
In today's issue of local Wesfälische Rundschau: Die Fackel fällt bestimmt
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T minus 5 days
2004-01-18 | At 98 meters above grounds, a look into one of the burners. Above, just the skies | Click to enlarge
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T minus 6 days
2004-01-18 | Interior view | Click to enlarge
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T minus 7 days
2003-07-06 | IT and server building | Click to enlarge | Inside 1 | Inside 2
(The "Inside 1" link does not pop up a new window in Firebird. It does in Exploder. Weird.)
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T minus 8 days
2003-07-30 | Arteries | Click to enlarge
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T minus 9 days
2003-10-08 | Hoerde Castle office buildings | Click to enlarge
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T minus 10 days
2003-09-24 | In the foreground, hot rolling mill | Click to enlarge
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T minus 11 days
2003-10-19 | Up in the clouds | Click to enlarge
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T minus 12 days
2003-08-24 | Tropicana Steel Mill | Click to enlarge
12 days to go for a unique landmark that spends identity to a whole region. As a prelude to an act of destruction without sense or reason, hebig.org will publish one Hoerde Torch photo per day - until it dies.
BACKGROUND
2004-01-11 Cronica de una muerta anunciada
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Cronica de una muerte anunciada
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Fronts harden in the decision whether to blow up the Phoenix Mill Torch in Dortmund Hoerde or not. The 98 meters high central chimney with three large-scale torches for low-caloric mill gases on top has been used to flare gases remaining from the basic oxygen steelmaking process that have too low a caloric value to use it elsewhere in the mill. Even though the sometimes several dozens meters high flame finally went out in 2001, the "Hoerder Fackel" continues to spend identity to the south of the city. If it disappears, there will not a single trace be left of the 160 years long history of steelmaking in Dortmund. There can't be a better monument or symbol for this past era.
BLOW IT UP, SAM
On the pro side: ThyssenKruppSteel, formal owner of the premises and the remaining buildings of the Phoenix Ost Steel Mill who says the decision is of political nature and politics is not its business, Gerhard Langemeyer, lord mayor of Dortmund, who wants to "blow up Dortmund into the future" and who says that "a torch without a flame is not a torch", and his lackeys in the administration who signed the formal permission to use explosives months ago. On the opposite side: Stadtbezirksmarketing Hoerde, a committee that adds a local voice to political decisions about the Hoerde district, strongly opposes the tear-down and now says it feels degraded to an alias organization whose formal powers are ignored by the lord mayor. Local citizens hardly raised their voice in the torch question so far.
13 DAYS TO GO
If decisions and opinions don't change, the torch will fall January 24th, 14:00 local time. Anything else takes a small miracle.
Photo Series: 26 Things in One Abandoned Steel Mill >
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