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Abstract
This essay evaluates the 2022 Floriade horticulture show in Almere, the Netherlands. The event has been heavily criticized. This critique acknowledges some of the comments as given, but proposes to place the Floriade in a larger perspective by comparing the Floriade tradition with the German Bundesgartenschau tradition and by positioning such events in a theoretical framework of hallmark events. In this perspective, the show is part of a substantial urban transformation process and an evaluation of the event can only be complete if it is seen in this larger context.
Notes
1 See: Noël van Dooren, ‘The Landscape of Critique: The State of Critique in Landscape Architecture and its Future Challenges’, SPOOL 5/1 (2018), 13-32.
2 It is clear that garden shows require good cooperation between private and public parties, with clear responsibilities for the duration of the event and its after-use. It is very relevant to compare the financial and organizational arrangements of different garden shows and how they support the public values as intended in the after-use. For the purposes of this article, I have omitted the organizational and financial aspects. The focus is on garden shows as designed events and as strategic tools in spatial development.
3 The idea of a travelling garden show that can be staged in different cities is not exclusively Dutch or German. England has had a series of garden festivals, starting with Liverpool
in 1984. Switzerland had two famous garden shows in 1959 and 1980, but no follow-up. China, Vietnam, Korea and Thailand have developed their own traditions in recent decades. In Australia, the United States and Canada, garden shows are reported, but only as events. Germany has by far the longest tradition. In Germany and the Netherlands in particular, the show or festival is increasingly seen as a strategic urban planning tool. This idea obviously influences the design of the show. Remarkably, garden festivals in England since 1984 were explicitly motivated as instruments for urban change, but after five editions the idea was abandoned.
4 In this broader sense, perhaps the closest ‘family member’ is the World’s Fair or Expo, although such fairs are generally a designed and curated collection of buildings and pavilions, whereas the garden festivals are primarily a ‘terrain’.
5 In terms of language, the phenomenon is quite complicated. The Dutch word tuinbouwtentoonstelling translates best as ‘horticultural exhibition’. The German word Gartenschau would be ‘garden show’. ‘Garden’ and ‘horticulture’ point at overlapping, but also very different areas. One of the main sources on the theme, Andrew Theokas, groups these events as ‘garden festivals’. In fact, this category has to be distinguished from another category of festival de jardins (Chaumont sur Loire, France) or ‘garden and flower show’ (Chelsey, England) as these are staged at a fixed place, and in a way do what their name promises. Both the Floriade and the Bundesgartenschau are not related to a particular place, and much broader, thematically, than gardens only. Their programme developed over time and today, words like ‘garden’ or ‘show’ only cover part of it. Recent shows in Asia more often announced themselves as ‘garden and landscape expo’. See: Andrew C. Theokas, Grounds for Review: The Garden Festival in Urban Planning and Design (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004).
6 The Landesgartenschau Beelitz was visited in October 2022 in its final weeks; the Bundesgartenschau Mannheim was visited November 2022, half a year before the grand opening. There is no specific relation of these two shows to the Floriade; they simply are the actual representatives of the larger tradition that could be visited in their manifestation as show. The Floriade was visited several times before, during and after the garden show, between January 2022 and May 2023.
7 Interviews were held in October and November 2022 with Ria van Dijk, Almere administration (Floriade), Klaas Hofman, MVRDV (Floriade), Jens Weisener, Mannheim administration (BuGa Mannheim), Christian Loderer, plancontext Landscape Architecture Berlin (LaGa Beelitz).
8 Martin Müller, ‘The Mega-Event Syndrome: Why So Much Goes Wrong in Mega-Event Planning and What to Do About It’, Journal of the American Planning Association 81/1 (2015), 6-17: 6.
9 Ibid.
10 Brain Chalkley and Stephen Essex, ‘Urban Development through Hosting International Events: a History of the Olympic Games’, Planning Perspective 14/4 (1999), 369-394: 370.
11 Kinga Kimic, ‘Garden Exhibitions as a Special Kind of Garden the Leading Value in the Historical Perspective in Relation to the Present’, Technical Transactions Architecture / Czasopismo Techniczne Architectura 6-A (2014), 9-24, 11.
12 Stephen Essex and Brian Chalkley, ‘Olympic Games: Catalyst of Urban Change’, Leisure Studies 17/3 (1998), 187-206: 189.
13 Ibid., 188.
14 Ibid., 191.
15 Müller, ‘The Mega-Event Syndrome’, op. cit. (note 8), 6.
16 Ibid., 7.
17 Theokas, Grounds for Review, op. cit. (note 5), Xi.
18 Ibid., 2.
19 Ibid.
20 Christian Diller, ‘State Garden Shows as a Format for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Towns: The Case of Gießen 2014, Germany’, Planning Practice & Research 35/3 (2020), 320-341: 321.
21 Andrew Smith, Events and Urban Regeneration: The Strategic Use of Events to Revitalise Cities (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 105.
22 Diller, ‘State Garden Shows, op. cit. (note 20), 321.
23 Sarah Karic and Sebastian Losacker, ‘How Can Green Events Accelerate Urban Sustainability Transitions? Insights from Eight German Regional Garden Shows’, Urban Research & Practice (2021), 2.
24 Kinga Kimic, ‘Garden Exhibitions as a Special Kind of Garden: the Leading Value in the Historical Perspective in Relation to the Present’, Technical Transactions Architecture / Czasopismo Techniczne Architectura 6-A (2014), 9-24: 10.
25 Ibid., 14.
26 John Heeley and Mike Pearlman, ‘The Glasgow Garden Festival: Making Glasgow Miles Better?’, Quarterly Economic Commentary 14/1 (1988), 65-70: 65-66.
27 Sam Wetherell, ‘Sowing Seeds: Garden Festivals and the Remaking of British Cities after Deindustrialization’, Journal of British Studies 83/104 (2022), 83.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 86.
30 Robert Holden, ‘British Garden Festivals: The First Eight Years’, Landscape and Urban Planning 18 (1989), 17-35: 17.
31 Why exactly this British initiative ended after only five episodes could not be established.
32 The famous Keukenhof permanent spring flower show originated from this early Flora exposition. To differentiate itself from Keukenhof ’s focus on plants, the Floriade expanded its scope from plants and gardens to horticulture.
33 Tuinbouwraad.
34 Landscape architect Michiel den Ruyter designed the 1992 Floriade in Zoetermeer.
35 See: bundesgartenschau.de/buga-iga/bisherige-gartenschauen/buga-potsdam-2001.html.
36 Since, due to the time required for preparation, there are always a number of BuGas and LaGas in the process of design and realization, certain offices have specialized in this field. The website of plancontext Berlin, author of the Beelitz 2022 LaGa, mentions more than ten LaGa designs.
37 As the BuGa Mannheim is fully integrated into the larger urban scheme, and as there are substantial sub-projects within the BuGa, the authorship is layered. A competition for the urban development was won by Atelier Loidl/Studio
Wessendorf in 2015. RMP Stefan Lenzen Landschafsarchitekten/ Fischer Architekten were selected to draw up the plan for the Grünzug or green lung, into which the urban development had to be integrated. At a later stage these design groups worked together. The actual Bundesgartenschau site was designed in detail by RMP. In contrast to Beelitz, for example, the City of Mannheim and its planning department are also heavily involved and can be seen as co-authors.
38 The city was located in one of the new polders, part of the famous Dutch Zuiderzeewerken, where the Zuiderzee was dammed and transformed into an inner lake, creating a number of large polders. In these polders, new villages and towns were built, of which Almere is the largest.
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Noël van Dooren
Noël van Dooren is a landscape architect, researcher and an author. As a research fellow in the area of food, agriculture and landscape, he is currently affiliated to Aeres University of Applied Science Almere. One of his niches is design critique. He has written numerous critiques for professional and academic journals and published on the phenomenon of critique itself. He worked in Germany for many years on the transformation of the Emscher River in the Ruhr Region.