Arboretum Floriade

Floriade Almere takes as its starting point the simple pleasure of plants and trees in our everyday lives and the city around us. The idea translates into an urban landscape that integrates the qualities of different species into the built environment, creating a rich variety of architectural and urban experiences that embrace, rather than eschew, the natural world. Can the symbiosis of city and landscape be a solution to growing resource consumption? Enriching our everyday lives with plants, while creating a world-class, energy- and food-generating city center is the challenge that Floriade 2022 will tackle over the coming years. 

The plan is a flexible framework for development that welcomes the expertise of Floriade organizer NTR into the project. The area has the potential to become many things, not least a hub for biological research and industry, which holds pride of place, both culturally and economically, in the Netherlands.

Almere Floriade is a grid of gardens on a 60ha square shaped peninsula. Each block will be devoted to different plants, a plant library organised alphabetically. Each block is devoted to a wide variety of programs, from pavilions to homes, offices and a university organised as a stacked botanical garden, a vertical eco-system in which each classroom is defined by a unique microclimate. Visitors will be able to stay in a jasmine hotel, swim in a lily pond and dine in a rose garden.

The city will offer homes in orchards, offices with planted interiors and bamboo parks. The Expo and new city centre will be a place that produces food and energy, a green, urban district demonstrating how plants, indeed nature itself, enriches every aspect of our daily lives.