1. Oberrheinischer Meister, Dar Paradiesgärtlein, ca. 1410-1420.
© Sammlung Städel Museum Frankfurt
Garden Futures: Designing with Nature
"Garden: a piece of land next to and belonging to a house, where flowers and other plants are grown, and often containing an area of grass."
The new exhibition of the Vitra Design Museum is titled "Garden Futures: Designing with Nature" and it present the history and craftmanship of the garden, and how, somehow, design and designer had a long-lasting link to this craft. In this exhibition, you will encounter numerous works related to the garden: chairs, maps, architectural plan which question and explore the history of the garden, from the 16-17th century to the future of gardens and gardening.
Such artists and architects like Hans Thoma, Alvar Aalto, Thomas Church or Vita Sackville-West, have, over the course of centuries, or decades change the way we think about what a garden should look, feel, do and can do in our life and health depending on our situation and the space we have available. But all of those ideas present the garden as an idealized space for our daily lives as well as our imaginations.
But the basis of the garden actually comes from a wide range of historical, cultural and political backgrounds. Even in your private garden, what you curated or a landscaper did, you are growing plants and flowers who are rooted in colonial history. Due to the numerous trade routs, a lot of plants and fruits have been adapted by men and science to grow in the northern atmosphere.
Due to the invention of the Wardian case, an early type of terrarium, it was possible to send live plants all around the world and to adapt them depending on the climate. Due to this small object, there was an important impact on the plant trade and on private gardens.
The garden as a community
In the run of the industrialisation, the nineteen centuries didn't forget its cities. They were changing, evolving, shapeshift by architects such as Haussmann in Paris, but in the United Kingdom, Ebenezer Howard published in 1898 his description of a garden city whose inhabitants would be able to grow their own food.
Centuries after, a group titled "The Green Guerrilla" was founded in New York by Liz Christy to redefine the garden as a place where social justice and public participation are actively negotiated. At the time of the 70s, there we're asking questions for the use of the garden: who is entitled to a garden, what is a garden for, and how can gardens be integrated into an urban environment?
The thrird part of the exhibition tries to answer all of these questions asked since the beginning of the show. To do so, the exhibition presents garden makers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994), Derek Jarman (1942–1994), and numerous collectivities and community garden such as in Kuala Lumpur co-founded by Malaysian landscape architect Ng Sek San.
The last section of the exhibition opens up to the garden of the futures. What will the garden of the future look like? Where will it grow and what plan we will use?
Those are the questions asked to tackle the climate crisis, the social injustice, the biodiversity, etc. Some of the garden might be made out of fabric such as the walkable textile "meadow" made specially for the exhibition by the Argentinian artist Alexandra Kehayoglou, or the architectural sketches of Thomas Rustemeyer which, alongside contemporary projects, also features traditional and indigenous practices.
The exhibition catalog
The exhibition catalogue feature essays by Amaica Kincaid, Gilles Clément, Liz Christy, Julia Watson, Bas Smets, Céline Baumann and Ng Sek San.
ISBN: 978-3-945852-52-1
The artists of the exhibition
Céline Baumann, Burle Marx, Mien Ruys, Kieran Dodds, Leonardo Finotti, Formafantasma, Zheng Guogu, Alexandra Kehayoglou, Jamaica Kincaid, Piet Oudolf, Ng Sek San, Lalage Show, Chew Yue Siew, Howard Sooley, Stefano Boeri, Mien Ruys, José Tabacow, Henk Wildschut, Julia Watson, Marjan van Aubel, Dan Pearson, Midori Shintani, Full Grown, Fritz Haeg, Catherine Mosbach, James Hitchmough, Bas Smets, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and many others.
The exhibition and its different stops
After its presentation at the Vitra Design Museum, the show will travel to the Design Museum Helsinki and the Museum of Finnish Architecture (10 November 2023 – 31 March 2024), the Vandalorum in Värnamo (27 April – 13 October 2024), the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam (November 2024 – March 2025), and the V&A Dundee (April – December 2025).
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Vitra Design Museum
Date: 25.03.2023 – 03.10.2023
Curators: Unknown
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Vitra Design Museum
Vitra Design Museum
Charles-Eames-Str 2
D-79576 Weil am Rhein
Phone: +49 76 21 702 3200
Fax: +49 76 21 702 3590
Mail: info@design-museum.de