Floriade sets up bio-based camp at Dutch Design Week

Author: Ron van der Ploeg

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands: What will cities be like in the next few decades? How can we improve the health and wellbeing of their residents and successfully apply horticulture in eco homes? These are the questions Expo 2022 Floriade, the AIPH-approved A1 World Horticultural Exhibition, seeks to answer by teaming up with Dutch designers, who last week descend in their thousands on the Dutch city of Eindhoven for the ultimate design event.

In front of the grand façades of former factories that once belonged to electronics giant Philips, Expo 2022 Floriade set up a somewhat chaotically constructed makeshift camp for its ante-premiere. Dedicated to the Expo which will take place in the Dutch city of Almere from April 28^th to 23 October 2022, the site was just one of Dutch Design Week’s 100 locations.

Under the roof of a giant wooden gazebo, to be re used in 2022, visitors stroll along displays of bio-based and biodegradable products such as insulating X-LAM wood from Belgium, sugar cane straws and plant based cheese, while a few metres further a vendor tries to sell his 100% plant based Grünten breakfasts and juices for the ultimate detox.

Opposite his stall, an XL computer motherboard, mounted on a tree wheeler, broadcasts in big letters the message ‘Looking for Solutions’ and clearly states Floriade’s mission at DDW: to attract young and upcoming designers from the Netherlands – a nation known for its unconventional, innovative, experimental and solution-driven approach – who can help design the city of the future. That is, a city that is green, water-wise, circular, produces its own food, provides a healthy living environment as well as sustainable energy solutions.

Set to boost the Green City of the Future is a strategic cooperation between Floriade and the Dutch Design Foundation. In Floriade’s stand at DDW, Expo 2022 Floriade CEO Peter Verdaasdonk and Martijn Paulen, CEO of the Dutch Design Foundation put their signatures to the agreement on Tuesday  October 22, 2019. The three-year cooperation will see the building of the Dutch Innovation Xperience, one of the focus points in the heart of the forthcoming Floriade. The building will include a block of six apartments, to be designed and constructed with minimal environmental impact. These eco homes will demonstrate to visitors what living in a Green City, designed solely around its occupants wellbeing and health, really looks, feels and tastes like.

DDW runs until October 27^th. For more information visit www.ddw.nl

Expo 2022 Floriade CEO Peter Verdaasdonk (left) and Martijn Paulen, CEO of the Dutch Design Foundation put their signatures to the agreement on Tuesday  October 22, 2019.

An XL computer motherboard, mounted on a tree wheeler, broadcasts in big letters the message ‘Looking for Solutions’.

Floriade’s mission at DDW: to attract young and upcoming designers from the Netherlands.

Former factories that once belonged to electronics giant Philips.