West 8 exhibits at Beijing Horticultural Expo 2019

Early in 2017, the Bureau of Beijing International Horticultural Exhibition Coordination selected, including West 8, five internationally renowned landscape design offices to create and build distinctive exhibition gardens at the ‘International Designers Creative Gardens’ part of the Beijing International Horticultural Exposition 2019, with each their representative characters. In line with the theme of the Horticultural Expo, six designers from five offices are chosen from countries including the United States, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Japan. Selection criteria is based on each designer’s professional competence, strong international influence, and each with their unique philosophy in landscape design. 

West 8 is much honoured to be selected to represent the Netherlands to exhibit in this part of the expo with the design ‘Garden of Time’. On December 2, at “2019 Beijing China World Horticultural Exposition of Foreign Designers Creative Exhibition Forum” held in Beijing Forestry University, all these five designs of exhibition gardens were unveiled. West 8’s Senior Landscape Architect Christian Dobrick represented West 8 and presented our design to the audience and journalists. 

‘Garden of Time’ is a symbolic journey of life: disconnected from the surroundings, visitors will be led by a narrow descending path connecting through a sequence of rooms: ‘The Garden of Short Youth’, ‘The Garden of High Clouds’ and ‘The Mirror Pond’. Each has its unique atmosphere created by different usage of materials, plants, colours and most importantly, each of these rooms provides visitors a different perspective, literally and philosophically. The journey of life ends in a moment of reflection.

‘International Designers Creative Exhibition’ is the essential part of the Beijing International Horticultural Exposition 2019. Under the theme of “Green Living, Beautiful Homeland”, this exposition aims to demonstrate the concept of ecology and disseminate green ideas. These five gardens aim to showcase an diverse beauty of gardening and high standard of horticulture quality. It will manifest industrial development and encourage cultural exchanges. It aims to inspire the both horticultiural experts and general public of China to connect with and experience nature in an distinctive level. 

Amongst other exhibitors of the ‘International Designers Creative Gardens’ of the Expo are: Danish designer Stig Anderson, British designers Tom Stuart-Smith, Japanese designer Kazuyuki Ishihara and George Hargreaves from United States of America. All five ‘International Designers Creative Gardens’ designs will be further developed in the coming months and construction is anticipated to start soon in 2018. After the Expo, they will become permanent exhibits of the show at the site in Beijing, marking the international horticultural standard of 21st century.