Garden Futures

De tuin is een wereld in het klein. Of het nu een klein lapje grond is dat met veel moeite gecultiveerd werd, een strak gestileerd kunstwerk of een natuurgetrouwe wilde tuin vol vaste planten: de vorm zegt iets over de mensen die de tuin aanlegden en hun relatie met de natuur – en soms die van hele culturen en tijdperken. Ook is de tuin voor ontwerpers een laboratorium waar biodiversiteit, sociale rechtvaardigheid en een duurzame toekomst getest en in de praktijk gebracht worden: een veelbelovende, hoopvolle plek.

A garden is a world in miniature. Whether it is a small patch of land painstakingly cultivated from nature, a tightly stylised work of art or a veritable wilderness of perennials, its form says something about the people who create it and their relationship with nature – and sometimes about entire cultures and eras. For designers, the garden is also a laboratory where biodiversity, social justice and a sustainable future are tested and put into practice: a place of promise and hope.

Garden Futures, which opens at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on Saturday 16 November, traces our evolving relationship with gardens. The exhibition explores the origins of the contemporary garden and searches for new models, based on gardens by designers and artists such as Roberto Burle Marx, Jamaica Kincaid, Mien Ruys, Piet Oudolf and Derek Jarman.

In Garden Futures, you will see the design ideals of the garden as a personal refuge, where people and nature live together in harmony. But gardens also reflect political and commercial agendas. One can see this when considering who owns a garden, how much space there is for gardens in cities, vegetable gardens as a form of self-sufficiency and food security, the historic colonial trade in flowers and plants, and the influence of garden tool and patio furniture manufacturers on our tastes.

As well as being an idyllic retreat, the garden is also a literal testing ground for new ideas and experiments. Increasingly, we see gardens as part of larger ecological systems, rather than demarcated pieces of land. Designers are experimenting in the garden with alternative solutions for biodiversity, social justice and a sustainable future. The exhibition features examples of indoor gardens, vertical forests, community gardens, floating gardens, school gardens, rooftop greenhouses, food forests, urban farms and forest gardens.

Garden Futures was developed in collaboration with the Vitra Design Museum and the Wüstenrot Foundation for culture and heritage, and previously shown at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. The original exhibition was designed by the Italian design studio Formafantasma.

For the Dutch adaptation at the Nieuwe Instituut, co-curator Maria Heinrich and spatial designer Frank Bruggeman have supplemented the exhibition with works from the archive of garden and landscape designer Michael van Gessel and with local, nature-inclusive designs. Several Rotterdam examples are included: the garden suburb of Vreewijk, the Island of Brienenoord tidal park, the community garden Wijktuin Ommoord, the Hofbogenpark and the New Garden. Artist Ada Patterson has created a work of art especially for this exhibition, providing a critical take on the colonial relationship of gardens and history in Rotterdam.
 

Opening: 15.11.2024, 19.00 uur