Type of project
Exhibition Greenhouse
Year
2019
Tag
Landscape Glass Metal Iconic
Status
In Progress
Location
Wassenar, Netherlands
The Voorlinden greenhouse with its garden and parking area is the first stop on an experiential journey encompassing the landscape and contemporary art and culture within the estate. It is the focal point of cohesion that connects the Meijendel park entrance, behind mansion X, to the Clingenbosh sculpture park.
The entrance to the estate leads visitors through an area that was designed as a garden in which the plants cultivated in the greenhouse could acclimatise before being replanted in the dune park. Its active role is inspired by the participation of the European Life Dunes project. The project’s primary purpose is to restore the region’s dune areas, which have been badly neglected, to allow the increasingly scarce plant and animal species to repopulate these areas.
The new steel and glass brick greenhouse, built to replace the old structure, features an iconic sectional perspective that echoes the typical skyline created by traditional Dutch homes. The layout is organised into parallel sections following the regular pattern of the polders.
The greenhouse features organic representations of eight dune regions from different latitudes, in contrast to the supporting structure’s formal rigour, a “0 km” restaurant and a craft shop in which visitors can buy limited-edition products wrapped in unique and contemporary packaging as momentos of their visit.
The flower garden outside, that follows the structural lines of the greenhouse’s sub-divisions, is crossed by a transverse path that runs through the cultivation areas and generates a river of herbaceous plants, following a chromatic scheme of concentric waves that break on the metal surface of the garden beds.
