The “Garden Futures” exhibition opens at the Vitra Design Museum on March 24. It shows the significance and design of the garden through the ages in a variety of ways. And its role for the future.
The “Garden Futures” exhibition opens at the Vitra Design Museum on March 24. It shows the significance and design of the garden through the ages in a variety of ways. And its role for the future.
A garden can be many things. It is a place for rest and relaxation. It can also be a place to grow your own vegetables. It can also be a habitat for various species of flora and fauna. Or not. In short, it can have many faces. These have changed over the course of time. And will continue to do so in the future. “Garden Futures” at the Vitra Design Museum is the first major exhibition to shed light on the history and future of the modern garden. It shows which ideals have led to our current understanding of the garden. At the same time, it poses the question of how gardens can contribute to the development of a more liveable future. It achieves this with various means. Examples from design are represented as well as those from everyday culture and landscape architecture. At the Vitra Museum, community garden projects are presented alongside green buildings and parks by renowned designers. The Italian design duo Formafantasma is responsible for the diverse show.
The “Garden Futures” exhibition first welcomes visitors with a reappraisal of garden design from past centuries. Examples from the art and architecture of past eras show the role of the garden in everyday life within a society. However, they also convey the significance it can have on a philosophical or religious level. This discussion leads on to the second section of the exhibition. This ultimately shows that the garden is political. They represent social and historical developments, economic interests and cultural value systems. On closer inspection, some perennials refer to the colonial history of many Western countries, for example. The spread of invasive species also resulted from the global exchange of useful plants. Another example with a political impact is urban concepts such as Ebenezer Howard’s garden city in the UK or Liz Christy’s green guerrilla movement in New York. They always deal with the question of who benefits from and has a claim to the garden and the city.
Finally, the third part of the “Garden Futures” exhibition provides answers to this question. Here, the Vitra Museum presents the work of nine exceptional garden designers. Their different backgrounds lead to a unique examination of open space. Author and gardener Jamaica Kincaid, for example, deals with themes such as colonial history, displacement and cultural appropriation in her gardens. The work of Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, on the other hand, is characterized by the use of native plants and the design of gardens that are as close to nature as possible. The artist Zheng Guogu, on the other hand, took the inspiration for his Liao Garden from a computer game and mediates between the virtual and real environment. The Malaysian landscape architect Ng Sek San has a different focus. He was involved in the creation of a community garden in Kuala Lumpur. The collection shows how diverse the design discipline is depending on the environment and influence.
Finally, the last part of the exhibition presents projects that deal with the future of the garden. The climate crisis and social injustice are the challenges of our time. In the Anthropocene era, the garden can no longer be understood as an isolated, individual green space. Rather, the entire planet must now be seen as a garden that needs to be cared for in order to give humanity a future on earth.
The exhibition can be seen at the Vitra Design Museum from March 25 to October 3.
More in the mood for a museum? Incidentally, the exhibition “Parliament of Plants II” is also running at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein until October, more precisely until 22.10.
