Polder Garden

Last year Michael van der Meer, the director of the Science Centre and Rolf Hut from the Faculty of Civil Engineering asked us to design the ‘smallest polder of the Netherlands’ at the Campus of TU Delft. We invited 5 students (Lowin van der Burg, Marij Hoogland, Linda Nijhof, Emma Ottevanger and Cem Steenhorst) from the faculty of Architecture, who invested quite some time next to their regular study program, to make a design. Denise Piccinini and myself from the department of Landscape Architecture coached them.

The project should demonstrate, especially to foreign guests and children, who visit the Science Centre, a typical piece of the man-made Dutch landscape.

Furthermore the polder should explain the principles of water management of the lowlands. Rain drops fall into the polder, are collected in the ditches, flow to the main canal and are discharged via the screw pump onto the ring canal that surrounds the polder.

Since the polder is very small and situated next to the Science Centre, neighboring a future international housing block we decided to design the polder as being garden. The image of the design should convince decision makers who are involved in planning process of TU Delft campus, that this Polder Garden can become an educational and spatial interesting hotspot. And moreover the first polder we, the Dutch, build in the Netherlands after having finished South Flevoland in 1968!