| The central theme of my work is the communication between people in urban or rural environments. In my installations, I explore such landscapes and cityscapes, studying how people live and work there. I use these installations or projects, which are custom-made from sustainable materials for a specific location, to excite the viewer’s curiosity and encourage interaction, enhancing the viewer's awareness of the site and its environs. My work often revolves around gardens and allotments. Generally speaking, gardens reflect the ideas and values of a culture, time or place. A lot of people want an allotment garden. While the demand for allotments is growing, the future of many of them is highly uncertain. Due to the expansion of urban areas, more and more allotment fields have been nominated for relocation or removal altogether. It is necessary to assign the allotment garden a new function: a publicly accessible green area within a revised environmental planning. The mobile allotment My art project ‘the mobile allotment’ plays with the boundaries of public space. My mobile garden can temporarily occupy spaces that do not ordinarily have a green function: a footpath, square, pavement, motorway, etc. As such, it temporarily changes the public area’s original zoning – making it less static. While temporary, this does have the purpose of calling attention to the importance of more permanent allotments in The Hague and other cities. This recreates a lost function: the growing of food in the city itself. Furthermore, my art projects can be seen as a new view on the utilisation of public space and serve as an example for other policy relating to urban green space. Documentary ‘Borders in Our Mind’, Havana, Cuba At both the national and international level, I investigate small-scale agricultural projects in the urban environment that have been realised on the basis of sustainable, cradle-to-cradle principles, and in which the cultivation of vegetables plays a key role. Are there specific methods/innovations that can be deployed in an urban environment to make the growing of vegetables an easier, more sustainable and more productive process? Which external factors are important in this process? During my research in Havana, Cuba (documentary ‘Borders in Our Mind’ October 2010), I discovered new possibilities in the areas of permaculture, rooftop gardens, composting, fruits and exotic crops. These methods have been applied in the Panderplein project in The Hague. Interactive allotment garden art project, Panderplein, The Hague I have developed an interactive allotment garden art project for a public square in the centre of The Hague, the Netherlands. The social security in the area has been restored in a positive, distinctive way for the people living on the square and in the surrounding area. The publicly accessible, anonymous paved square has been transformed into a sustainable, agrarian inner-city allotment field, giving the square a new interactive function for its residents and visitors. The exploration of a wide range of specific methods and innovations that make the growing of vegetables and flowers easier, more sustainable and more productive with a focus on the surrounding area, the location and the execution, has resulted in the development of an ‘urban agriculture laboratory’. Large sections of the square’s paving are removed, so that the rainwater can drain off directly. The cultivation of (edible) flowers, old strains (forgotten vegetables) and unknown strains (Portuguese cabbage) increases biodiversity. The interaction on the square results in the spontaneous development of more social control and the use of the square by visitors and local residents has altered in a unique and positive sense. Plans for the future A major task that presents itself to The Hague in the area of urban development is the development of a sustainable outlook for the city’s urban landscape. The urbanistic consequences of this task could be the creation of an extensive ‘vegetable infrastructure’ for the city. Thanks to the close vicinity of supply and demand, production and transport costs can be kept to a minimum. In addition to pre-existing parks, allotment fields, etc., undefined public space can be used for small-scale agricultural purposes and to connect the aforementioned areas. To step up the realisation of such initiatives, it will be necessary to relax current regulations. The Panderplein project was conceived as a means by which to develop a permanent research location and model for this vision: it is sustainable, permanent in nature and is a part of a new strategy for urban agriculture in The Hague and other cities throughout Europe. Annechien Meier, december 2010 |
| explore landscapes and cityscapes |
