Winner of the German Lighting Design Prize: Diepholz on the way to light

Now, when it gets dark early, it comes into its own particularly well: Diepholz shines in the middle. And it glows beautifully. This has been officially stated by the jury of the German Lighting Design Prize, with the fairy lights already hanging in the sky above the pedestrian zone intersection as if on pre-Christmas alert; They are still off, but they can certainly be switched on at any time and thus soon affect the whole excellent concept again.

For purists, now is the time to travel to Diepholz and walk the short kilometer from the train station towards the center at dusk. It's best without a route planner, nobody needs one here, you can only go straight ahead anyway, and then the contrast is more noticeable. It's impressive. Bahnhofstrasse seems gloomy and to the left the old street lamps seem to cast a gray veil on the path that they illuminate.

On the right, however, Lange Straße opens up like a friendly embrace. And that must be an effect of the lighting, the warm white LED pillars and the functional strip embedded in the ground, with which the district town of Dümmer won the 2026 Lighting Design Prize in the “Outdoor Lighting/Public Areas” category.

This is not a consolation prize category for rural communities: in the course of ten years, Diepholz is only the second city with a population of 20,000 to win it. Her predecessors included Hamburg, Hanover, Munich and Berlin. And this time too, Luxembourg, a European capital, and Düsseldorf, an economic metropolis, were nominated. And yet the place, which lies somewhat in the slipstream of history between Osnabrück and Bremen, outshone them all.

The “redesigned lighting of the Diepholz city center” succeeds in “filling the urban space with life sustainably and efficiently through atmospheric components and targeted accentuations,” the jury explains its decision somewhat askew. On the one hand, it is misleading to describe the two street sections in the middle of Diepholz, which have already been developed in terms of lighting design, as the “city center”: it is still supposed to grow towards the castle, both in terms of urban and lighting planning, and the Bahnhofstrasse problem has also been recognized.

And on the other hand, anyone who calls Diepholz “urban” obviously doesn’t know what the adjective means. So the praise obscures the municipal design achievement, the element of which is the lighting: It is a noticeable step on the way to turning the town center, which was not particularly frequented in the evenings even before Corona, into a space where people hang out. And that's because they want to.

This is not a short-term goal. Currently all the shops here are closed at 7 p.m. and the gaming islands are deserted; There are, at least, two restaurants and a pub, the fountain bubbling. At the end of the street a man sits on a bollard and sings Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah quietly, although neither with the melody nor the lyrics; He probably has one in his tea.

So: There is still something going on in the direction of life. And to want to burden this solely with the lighting concept would be just as nonsense as to hope that it will stimulate tourism. “Nobody comes to Diepholz to look at the street lighting,” confirms Kristin Christen from the responsible design office OC-Lichtplanung. “That would be too much to ask.” Instead, the lighting concept should “help people feel comfortable here”. It doesn't have to be a big deal.

But it does have a few playful elements. This means that every now and then the light tiles embedded in the floor take on the colors blue and green, “these are the city colors,” says Christen. According to her, they can also add other colorful tones to the atmosphere at city festivals. And next month, on the International Day against Violence against Women, also called “Orange Day,” they should send a sign of solidarity.

As part of the redesign of the city center, Diepholz had a lighting concept developed that impressed the expert jury of the lighting design award with its LED columns and their warm, friendly atmosphere. Cheers!

In addition to people from Diepholz and those who want to become one, people with an interest in urban planning could be enlightened here.

Actually none. If you want to secure your way back: The last train to Bremen leaves shortly before midnight and to Osnabrück shortly after midnight.

Another detail can be found in the passage to Hinteren Straße: well-hidden projectors paint goose silhouettes made of light on the walls of the two houses between which this corridor runs, because the Diepholz goose is what you know Diepholz for if you know Diepholz. According to Slowfood, it has particularly tender meat and is highly endangered.

In any case, it is almost made to disappear by the white light with which the jeweler shines on his ready-to-wear watches in the shop window: there will still be talk of lighting competitions in Diepholz, and not just at Christmas time. But it will be okay. Because city eradication is certainly a goal that can be agreed upon. And the city is on the right track in this regard.