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ANNET BULT
Dr. L. Alma School Garden | Annet Bult (1958, Heiloo, Netherlands)
Annet Bult specializes in the development of space at the town & country planning level. In her designs for landscapes and other projects, she uses natural materials. While she does this for philosophic reasons, it also adds to the poetry of her work.
Annet Bult’s Free Space is at the Dr. L. Alma School Garden, where more than 550 children are allowed each year to cultivate their own patch of ground. To her mind, this simultaneously earthly and heavenly place is a jewel in the unidimensional office landscape of the Zuidas. As plans now stand, the school gardens will disappear from here and be moved to the Gijsbrecht van Aemstel Park. In collaboration with the Regional Planning Service (Dienst Ruimtelijke Ordening), Annet Bult is using her Free Space to investigate the extent to which school gardens can become part of the gardens surrounding the offices in the Zuidas.
The future office gardens are among the spaces in the Zuidas that have yet to be designed. Large corporations and landlords of office buildings contract out the design of their "garden" to landscape architects. The most important request they have for the landscape architect is to transform the surrounding space into a company calling card. Often the garden is reduced to something merely to look at. Maintenance and the expense this entails always play a large role in the design.
Proposal - During the Free Spaces presentation, Annet Bult came up with a proposal to transform the surroundings of an office into a school garden – a place where children, office workers and passers-by can have the experience that the city is a landscape in which they can feel involved too. Annet Bult developed a splendid and actually simple idea for a new way of using public space – certainly considering the fact that the present school garden has to go because the price of the ground is too high.
The idea came to the attention of the ABN-Amro Bank, who turned out to be extremely interested. The bank has taken the lead in supervising a feasibility plan for the eventual realization of this unusual garden. They organized two meetings with all stakeholders. Everyone was enthusiastic about the proposal, feeling that it can make a very positive contribution to the Zuidas. This would be the first school garden in the Netherlands maintained in collaboration with employees of a company and open to workers, residents and passers-by.
After consultation, a suitable location was found in the Zuidas, and the feasibility plan has by now been completed.
