THEATRUM BOTANICUM

As a pilot project on the site of a former Botanical Garden in Brussels, Theatrum Botanicum proposes a new kind of garden, organised in order to rearticulate a contemporary idea of ‘nature’ and public life.

The European botanical garden has always been a space to articulate our relationship with the natural world, but it was also a site of concrete abstraction, a testing ground for how not just plants but society at large could be labelled and classified.

Through the provision of a technical and organisational framework in the form of a roof, the garden’s configuration is gradually altered, defining a series of botanical and human conditions that are neither natural nor artificial. Bringing multiple stakeholders and narratives together under one common roof, the garden becomes a blueprint for a new type of public space, a social and botanical condenser where the care of plants informs our care for each other.

Location: Brussels, Belgium, Year: 2019-20, Program: Landscape, Status: Competition