A large swath of sweeping parkland, a protected heritage building, a beloved cultural and outdoor destination of locals. These characteristics – plus many other structural, architectural and usage demands – faced the architects selected to create the Park Groot Vijversburg visitor centre in Tytsjerk, the Netherlands, in 2011.

The two chosen for the job that also included landscaping and the renovation of the existing historical estate, were Marieke Kums, founder of Rotterdam-based Studio MAKS and Japanese Junya Ishigami , founder of Tokyo-based Junya Ishigami + Associates. Both had worked for the Japanese architectural firm SANAA, but they had not collaborated on this scale before.

The original neoclassical villa, Villa Vijversburg, was bult in 1844 by Baudina Looxma and Nicolaas Ypeij. Open to the public from 1906 onward, the estate is owned by Op Toutenburg foundation that has initiated the large-scale upgrades and the expansion of the premises as well as the artistic and cultural offerings of the park.

The park is a well-known destination that hosts international art exhibitions, musical performances, church services and themed excursions.

 The small town of Tytsjerk where the park is located is in the Dutch province of Friesland, 93 miles (150 kilometres) northeast of Amsterdam. Its closest larger town is the provincial capital of Leeuwarden, the European Capital of Culture in 2018.

The completed Park Groot Vijversburg project, reopened to the general public this summer, will be an important destination and regional focal point for the upcoming year’s cultural celebrations.

Kums and Ishigami’s project is an excellent example of scale and balance. The new structure is radically different from the existing villa, and much larger, but its lightness and exquisite ethereal qualities make it seem almost temporary or fleeting. It does not fight for attention yet we cannot take our eyes off its sexy curves.

The new glass building is more of a piece of artistic architecture than a strict response to the initial brief that called for a traditional visitor centre set-up with a separate tea room, shop and bathrooms.

The new pavilion serves as a separate structure from the original historic villa and is accessible during events, including lectures, exhibitions, concerts and weddings. The villa will carry the tearoom and shop functions and the expanded park area features outdoor art installations and an open-air stage. Tuija Seipell

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Green is in. In more ways than one. We are seeing more plants and greenery in designer homes, hotels, restaurants, offices and public spaces than ever before.

We are seeing them both inside and outside. It could be that the simple reason for this is that smoking is no longer allowed in public spaces in many countries and therefore plants can actually survive better indoors, but we doubt it.

We believe there are much broader reasons behind the welcome increase in green in our lives.

It is clear that we crave more nature in our lives. We want the benefits that being in nature can give us. Science is showing us that these can include a healthier body and mind. Just being near a tree or a babbling brook or a fountain will calm our minds and replenish our souls.

We want balance and a lifestyle that includes time spent outdoors, not just on special occasions but regularly, as part of our everyday lives.

Nature is what we need more of, not money or gear. This is true not just with the traditional ‘treehuggers’ or outdoor enthusiasts but all of us.

We want the magic of the lush moon Pandora, depicted in James Cameron’s movie Avatar, but we want it now, in our current lives.

                                                                                                                                                                                           Leo’s Oyster Bar 
Benefits

Indoor plants release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. A Norwegian study shows that using plants indoors decreases the incidents of dry skin, colds, sore throats and dry coughs.

In the Netherlands, a study discovered that adding plants to office environments resulted in these same outcomes. And a study by the Agricultural University in Norway found that adding plants to offices resulted in sickness rates decreasing by more than 60 per cent.

A Kansas State University study found that when plants were introduced into hospital rooms, patients asked for less pain medication, had lower heart rates and blood pressure, and less anxiety and fatigue. All of this lead to shorter hospital stays and ultimately, cost savings.

In England, a Royal College of Agriculture study found that students were 70 per cent more attentive in rooms containing plants. The results of the same study indicated that attendance was higher for lectures given in classrooms with plants.

Plants are therapeutic, calming and nurturing. And some believe that if you talk to plants they grow better, so they could even be said to be good company.

And, of course, plants and flowers are just simply beautiful. Their mere decorative effect can change a room completely.

                                                                                                                                                      Interactive Floating Flower Garden

Green everywhere

In addition to just having more plants indoors, we are also seeing more urban gardens and community gardens, more rooftop gardens, balcony gardens and windowsill gardens.

We are seeing both massive and small-scale green walls both inside and out in banks, grocery stores, offices and airports.

                                                                                                                                                                     Garden Top House, Vietnam
We are seeing rooftop greenhouses of a grand scale proposed by designers for both existing and yet-to-be-built structures. We are seeing solariums and greenhouses not just in the countryside but in the centers of cities.

We are seeing beehives and green roofs on public buildings. And many hotels and restaurants now grow their own herbs in rooftop gardens and garden plots.

                                                                                                                                           Crossrails Station Roof Garden – London

Big-city farmers’ markets, of course, have become extremely chic. From London to New York, Copenhagen to San Francisco, a hipster weekend is not really complete without a trip to the local farmers’ market for organic produce, fruit and herbs, cut flowers and those lovely un-evenly shaped loaves of organic heritage-grain bread.

All of these things are connected to each other. They are also connected to our overall interest in organic foods and sustainability, outdoor life and healthy living.

We believe that even glamping and extreme nature travel experiences – including scuba diving at night, ice climbing and heli-hiking or skiing – are all part of this same direction.

                                                                                                                                                                                 Casa Cruz, New York
Not a trend

And we think all of this is not a trend. It is a permanent change. It is a significant shift, a strong signal, a persistent new direction in our thinking. It is a lasting, and necessary, change for the better.

None of the components of this shift are particularly new but the different directions and aspirations are starting to really come together and mature, and we think one of the indications of this is the increased use of greenery in design overall. Design is reflecting what we collectively desire.

                                                                                                                                                                                     The Line Hotel, L.A

Long, long ago

Interestingly, plants have played a decorative or entertaining role both indoors and out for a long time. Ancient Chinese were using penjing trees – later known as bonzai in Japanese – in potted miniature landscapes as indoor decorations 3,000 years ago. Indoor plants were a sign of wealth and also gave the opportunity to practice the art of gardening indoors year-round.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, were built by King Nebuchadnessar II in 600 BC, if they existed at all. They were said to have looked like a large mountain constructed of mud bricks with a series of tiered gardens of trees, shrubs and vines. Legend has it that the King built the garden for his wife, Queen Amytis of Median, who missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland.

Ancient Romans loved flowers indoors as well. At around the year 0, wealthy Romans in their villas and bath houses tended to marble pots containing brightly colored flowers such as roses and exotic plants from their conquests in Europe and Egypt.

On his first major voyage across the Atlantic for the monarchs of Spain, the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492 and brought back many of its tropical plants and flowers.

Known for their love of gardening, people in Victorian England in the late 1800s, endured the gloomy months of winter by tending to their indoor gardens of ivy and other low-light plants until they could get back to their outdoor gardens.

Perhaps learning from London’s famous Kew Gardens, opened in 1759, the Victorians also made greenhouses and botanical gardens popular. Kew was the showcase to the public of the multitude of species collected from around the British Empire.

                                                                                                                                                                   Wilderness Cafe, Amsterdam

The Victorians also became interested in floriography or the language of plants in which various plants are said to mean certain things, such as passion or chastity or modesty. Gifts of flowers and plants were extremely chic and they contained secret messages to those who knew how to read the language.

When central indoor heating became possible in the mid-1800s, architects were free to create spaces with higher ceilings and larger windows. More and more people were now able to grow plants indoors, even in colder climates and during sunless moths.

                                                                                                                                                            Vast Restaurant in Copenhagen

More recently, it is said that plants started to appear in workplaces and offices when women entered the work force outside the home.

Whatever the origins of our passion for plants, we are putting our faith in designers and architects, business owners, school boards, cities and governments – all of us – to ensure that the greening of our modern lives will continue and increase in the near and far future. We all need it. Tuija Seipell.

                                                                                                                                                  Rashid Johnston Installation, Moscow

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Last November, TeamLab, a Japanese collective of architects, designers, artists, programmers and engineers, installed a large-scale retrospective of its work at the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo.

The two main interactive digital art exhibitions of the retrospective – ‘Digital Art’ that toured the world in 2014, and ‘Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park’ experience park for children – have been so popular at the Miraikan that the show has been extended till May 1, 2015.

In addition to the two exhibitions, the installation event has also included new pieces and components that have rotated from time to time.
One of the recently re-installed pieces is the interactive experience called Floating Flower Garden that involves more than 2,300 living and growing plants suspended from the ceiling.

The plants interact with the visitor so that the plants closest to the viewer float up while the others stay lower. This creates a cocoon or a personal, airy flowering ‘room’ with the viewer at its centre.
The plants are constantly in motion reacting to the movements of the viewers. If several people approach an area simultaneously, the plants react by re-creating the space around them.

TeamLab describes the thinking behind this meditative space: ‘Japanese Zen gardens are said to have been born as a place for Zen priests to carry out training so that they can become one with nature. The garden is a microcosm of the vastness of the surrounding natural mountain areas where they gathered to train.’
TeamLab’s group of ‘ultra-technologists’ is lead by 38-year-old CEO Toshiyuki Inoko who co-founded TeamLab in 2001. He is also currently serving as a creative industry private sector expert for the Cool Japan project by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. – Tuija Seipell

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The incredibly beautiful ‘;A Path in the Forest’; by architect Tetsuo Kondo was a temporary installation in the Kadriorg Park near Tallinn, Estonia.

It was part of Tallinn’s 2011 European Capital of Culture activities and in particular, part of LIFT11, a festival of 11 urban installations. All other installations in LIFT11 were selected through a design competition, but Kondo was invited to create the Path. It was realized in partnership with the EU-Japan Fest Japan Committee.

Kardiorg Park is an urban forest, only 15-minutes’ walk from the Old City of Tallinn. While it has some intact treed areas, it is mostly an urban park of man-made structures and tended gardens.

With his light touch, Kondo created a 95-meter (311-foot) suspended walkway among some of the park’s 300 year-old trees. The unobtrusive Path is similar to Kondo’s 2010 work Cloudscapes for the Venice Architecture Biennale. Both works put humans on an uncommon level in relation to their surroundings, creating a new viewpoint and inviting further examination. – Tuija Seipell

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We will never tire of the positive effects of nature. Its calming, soothing and inspiring influence will never go out of style.

The more we rush, the more time we spend indoors staring at our screens and devices, the more urban our lifestyles become, the more we crave and need time away from it all.

It has been amazing to follow the newest solutions to the old dilemmas: How to bring more green space to cities; how to reclaim underused urban land for recreational and other ‘;green’; uses; how to provide more and more people the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of spending time in nature.

Lately, we have seen fantastic examples of how designers and architects, urban planners and citizens’ organizations have accomplished both large and small-scale projects, from bringing a bit of greenery, and open space to otherwise bleak surroundings, to large-scale neighborhood-changing undertakings.

The most prominent of these large-scale projects in the past few years has probably been New York’s Highline, the ‘;park in the sky’; that reclaimed a deemed-to-be-demolished industrial transportation structure for recreational and other uses.

It has been a massive project in all aspects of the word, and it has also become a poster-project whose publicity is helping other projects get off the ground. We hope it will continue to give citizens’ organizations, city officials, designers and architects encouragement and inspiration as they tackle smaller projects, or even ones bigger than Highline.

We expect much more reclaiming of industrial and transportation lands, more green roofs, more natural features replacing concrete and asphalt, more walking and hiking paths, more waterways for recreational use, more spectacular viewing areas, more urban sanctuaries, more trees.

Getting back to nature is not a new phenomenon. For hundreds of years, wealthy city dwellers have travelled to summer residences and summer resorts, and withdrawn to their cottages and lakeside retreats. They’ve enjoyed fresh air in their gardens and hunting estates.

Of course, the need for recreational options has escalated since the industrial revolution. People, even ordinary citizens, now needed a place to catch their breath. They lived in more and more urban environments and also had the previously unknown luxury of a few days off per month.

Children went to summer camps, adults went hiking and camping, entire families went on long drives in recreational vehicles. Tourism boomed and being in nature became the vogue thing to do. And it has remained so ever since.

As we seek balance in our hectic lives today, we see solutions outdoors. ‘;Green space’; in the widest sense of the word in cities and surrounding areas is beneficial from recreational, ecological, economical, social and health purposes, but mostly we love it because it is just plain beautiful.

We love gardens and parks, ponds and water features, playgrounds and sports fields, open plazas, avenues and boulevards. We want more of it because even the smallest green feature lifts our spirits, while the wide open spaces can change our lives. – Tuija Seipell

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Youth Factory, Factoría Joven, in Mérida, Spain, is an example of what can be done if a regional government works with the community and local designers to meet the needs of youth that may otherwise be heading down the slippery path of street life.

The structure may not be a permanent monument to architecture, but it is definitely a better place than the back streets of Spanish cities. We are all for any attempt at all to provide children and youth a place to be kids, to be creative and just have some fun.

Factoría Joven was designed by Madrid-based Selgascano Architects, a partnership between husband and wife, José Selgas and Lucía Cano.

Using recycled furniture, inexpensive building materials and temporary solutions, the designers were definitely not looking to build a monument to architecture; they were much more interested in affordable ordinariness and practical possibilities.

Factoría Joven helps attract the restless, unemployed street youth off the streets and provides them with a place to skateboard, hip-hop dance, climb rocks, create graffiti — whatever they would otherwise do in much more sinister surroundings. There are also a computer lab and a dance studio, both 800-square-meters in size. Meeting rooms and spaces for theatre, video and music are all included.

This is one of several such ‘youth factories’ in the area; recreational centers and places that are inclusive, open and safe. – Tuija Seipell

Photography by Roland Halbe.

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As much as we love temporary stunts, happenings, art installations and large-scale sculpture in the urban space, we want more.

We are on a quest for truly transformed urban spaces. We are looking for instances where a council, city, town, municipality has taken the initiative, come up with the funds and actually transformed a mediocre, unused, ugly space into an inviting and fun public environment.

The spectacular reincarnation of High Line in New York from an impossibility to a cool urban environment comes to mind. Or the transformation of an ugly view-blocking concrete barricade between skyscrapers and beach to a colourful seaside promenade at Paseo Marítimo de la Playa Poniente in Benidorm, Spain.

Or the 324 meter-long meandering bench (world’s longest, apparently) by Studio Weave on the seafront at Littlehampton in the UK. It is not just a bench, it is an experience and an environment.

Or Copenhagen’s Skuperkilen neighborhood, where in a decidedly urban and straight-forwardly artificial way the designers and planners at Topotek1, Bjarke Ingels Group and Superflex invaded the entire available space to create a delightful expression of the various cultures and backgrounds represented by the area’s residents. Superkilen received the Institute Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design by the National AIA Awards 2013.

We need more councils that have the vision and passion to do these things. We need people to demand and rally for them, and we need visionary designers, architects, planners and artists to design and propose and speak for them. Let’s just do it!.

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How did he do it? Wow. He sculpts a plant display the way a sculptor would handle marble or wood or clay. He reveals the sculptural beauty of a branch of a palm. He creates a hair piece of feathers and moss. He carves a gourd into sensual art. He makes color pop in ways that look unnatural, yet the pieces are real.

Events, shows, displays, massive theatrical floral extravaganzas. We never knew you could do all this with flowers. The master florist was born in the Dutch dahlia town of Zundert, spent 15 years in charge of sales at Harrods floral department in London and now works as a freelancer in Europe. – Tuija Seipell.

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Baupiloten is a group of architecture students who during their studies at Faculty VI, Institute for Architecture at Berlin Technical University (Technische Universität Berlin) develop their own projects from concept to implementation under professional guidance. Architect Susanne Hoffmann founded Baupiloten (Bau=build, Piloten=pilot) in 2003 and has headed it since 2004.

The Taka-Tuka-Land kindergarten was originally erected as a temporary solution, but with the fantastic Baupiloten approach to the refurbishment, it has become a permanent place for children.

The Taka-Tuka-Land is part of the Pippi Longstocking lore created by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Pippi in Taka-Tuka Country is a movie based on one of her novels. The children at the kindergarten and their teachers created collages, models, drawings and ideas based on Taka-Tuka Land with bridges, huts, merry-go-rounds made of blossoms and thrones made of seashells. The Baupiloten students then spent several days with the children observing their daily routines, their schedules and their ways of communication.

From this extensive groundwork, the design story for the space was developed. The building itself is Pippi’s old oak tree that contains a lemonade factory. The lemonade breaks through the bark of the tree and flows outside creating padded play areas. The story of the building is a trip through the seven stages of the lemon tree, each facilitating a different activity: The lemonade tree, Glittering lemonade in the sun, Lemonade drops, The lemonade island, Waiting for the parents, Lemonade gallery, The bark breaks open, and Delving into lemonade. Pippi’s most likely verdict would be “Jätte god!” By Tuija Seipell.

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