Architects OMA have proposed flower auction houses, cable cars and an outdoor theatre as part of Central Holland’s bid to host the World Horticultural Expo in 2022.
The six-month-long festival would occupy a 60 hectare site in the city of Zoetermeer and comprise a loop of zones connected by pathways and rivers, making them accessible to both bicycles and boats.
Each zone would be dedicated to a different aspect of the horticultural industry, including technology, innovation, distribution, culture and leisure, and would link up with existing greenhouses and a whitewater sports complex.
The masterplan is competing with MVRDV’s designs for an artificial peninsula of gardens in Almere, as well as with proposals from the cities of Amsterdam and Groningen.
The winning candidate will be announced in October.
In recent months OMA have also designed offices with a sliding facade, a performance institute in New York and a contemporary arts centre in Moscow. Rem Koolhaas gave Dezeen a quick introduction to that project, which you can watch here.
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Here’s some extra information from OMA:
OMA designs 2022 Floriade masterplan for Holland Central
As part of a team including the province of South Holland, eight local municipalities, and ARCADIS, OMA has designed a 60-hectare masterplan proposal for Floriade – the biggest horticultural expo in Europe – in 2022. Held every ten years since 1960, and attracting an average of 2 million visitors from around the world, 4 different cities across the Netherlands are competing to host the next Floriade.
OMA is representing Holland Central, with a site in the middle of the Randstad, in Zoetermeer, with 5 million inhabitants in a 50km radius. OMA has designed a circular plan that connects a variety of existing conditions on the site, all presently related to horticulture: high-tech green houses, a future agro-innovation campus, an Olympic-grade leisure park and traditional Dutch landscape near the source of the river Rotte, which visitors can explore by bike or by boat. The design focuses the fair’s activities into five concentrated zones covering essential aspects of modern horticulture: technology, innovation, the global market, leisure, and culture. The park includes a 2,500-seat open-air theatre, a Land Art zone, global village, and a cable-car connection spanning across the ring.
The winning bid will be announced at the end of the current Floriade, now taking place in Venlo, in October.
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