On the weekend of the 8th and 9th of October, the Floriade Expo 2022, the international horticulture exhibition held in the Netherlands every ten years, closed in Almere. For six months, the 60-hectare Floriade park on the Weerwater lake presented the latest horticultural developments from around the world, and now the park will be transformed into Hortus, a new sustainable residential area.
The focus of the Expo, in fact, was not only plants but also sustainability: about 400 participants presented the latest innovations, from nature-inclusive agriculture to a sustainable pilot house made from 93% recycled plastic.
Almere is a new city built at the bottom of the former Zuiderzee to meet the ever-increasing demand for living space in the Randstad area. The Randstad is a crescent-shaped urban agglomeration consisting mainly of the four largest Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht), their suburbs, and many intermediate cities, which have grown and merged into each other and where today, almost half of the country’s population lives.
Largest city
In just 40 years, it has become one of the ten largest cities in the Netherlands, with more than 211,000 inhabitants and development continues because now, after the international horticulture exhibition, the site of Floriade will become Hortus, a new residential green area.
This new urban district draws its basic character from the master plan developed by the Dutch architecture studio MVRDV. The focus was on the diversity of plants, health, and well-being and on the simple pleasure of having green spaces around us. The ambition was to enrich the 60-hectare site with plants, trees, and flowers while exploiting its potential to become a city district that produces energy and food.
Read the complete article at www.floornature.com