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Main exhibition Rotterdam Architecture Month: ‘Garden of the City’
Aad Hoogendoorn
In the traverse between the Erasmus MC and the Museumpark parking garage, Atelier Tomas Dirrix and Chantal Schoenmakers designed a modular exhibition about the green future of the city.
The main exhibition of the Rotterdam Architecture Month focuses on the future of the ‘Garden of the City’. Architects, landscape designers and residents show how the city can become greener, more attractive and more biodiverse. In this exhibition you’ll see how Hofplein changes from a traffic circle into a green oasis, look at the city through the eyes of a rat and see how brutalist buildings are taken over by nature. Plans for community gardens alternate with ideas for distribution parks. A kaleidoscopic overview of original plans for the future.
About the design of the exhibition
Atelier Tomas Dirrix and Chantal Schoenmakers have created a design for the traverse that connects the Museumpark with the Erasmus Medical Center and the underground car park. It is a landscape with four islands, each on a theme of the exhibition: Voice of the park, How public is the public space? The healthy city of the future and The everyday garden.
The design has utilized a modular structure. Each exhibition component is made up of an everyday and (subsequently) usable piece of furniture: a stool, chair, bench and table. The collage by Yves Brunier/OMA, in which a work of art is carried through the Museumpark, was the source of inspiration. After Rotterdam Architecture Month, the furniture will also be distributed throughout the city to be reused.
Content contributors of the exhibition:
Voice of the park
- Programmed Trees by: LMNL office
- Rat City by: Merel Ligtelijn & Christine van Royen
- Regeneration of the concrete jungle by: Mike van Rheenen
- The Hofbogen plinths, Rotterdam by: BureauVanEig
- Studio ‘New Habitat’: the voice of the stork by: Academie van Bouwkunst Groningen
How public are public spaces?
- Museumpark Biotopes by: Studio Nadia Nena
- BOS.POLDER.PLEIN by: Werkgroep Bospolderplein
- Productive Commons by: Izabela Słodka en Federica Zatta
- Public Spaces for Urban Sports by: RUSH World
- Stadspark West is both a fact and an idea by: buro MA.AN, DaF-architecten en Urban Scenography
The healthy city of the future
- A courtyard as an outdoor classroom by: Expertisecentrum Maatschappelijke Innovatie, Hogeschool Rotterdam
- The Box by: Luïsa Jacobse
- KleinpolderpleinPARK by: Kunstenaarsgroep Observatorium
- Rotterdam Hofplein by: Juurlink + Geluk Stedenbouw en Landschap
- Working Garden by: Dividual
The everyday garden
- Nature-inclusive living in a green oasis by: INBO en h3o architects
- Trees make a significant contribution by: Trompenburg Tuinen & Arboretum
- Tuin de Bajonet by: Stichting Tuin de Bajonet, Wolbert van Dijk
- Neighbourhood garden by: Aanpact
- Watching a Tree Grow by: Nazanin Hedayati en Bart Buerman
About Atelier Tomas Dirrix and Chantal Schoenmakers
Atelier Tomas Dirrix is an architecture practice based in Rotterdam. Since the start it has been working from a cultural and material notion of building. Atelier Tomas Dirrix carries out a diverse range of work, including residential, cultural and public buildings, and permanent and temporary commissions. Through contributions to publications and exhibitions, their projects and ideas are part of an emerging international conversation on architecture. For the scenography of the Garden of the City, they collaborated with Chantal Schoenmakers, known for her involvement in Rotterdam’s maker culture.
The exhibition ‘Garden of the City’ can be seen until June 30.
