Landscape Architecture:Michaelvan Gessel
Location: Kloostertuin / Dordrecht / TheNetherlands
Design & construction: –
Client: Municipality of Dordrecht
In collaboration with Caspar Slijpen (landscape architect) andFrancine van Kempen (technician)
Photos: Emilio Troncoso
Text: Michael van Gessel
Dordrecht’s Hof (court) is the place where representatives of Dutchcities met secretly in 1572 in a bid to secede from the Spanishempire to which they then belonged. The Hof is therefore oftenregarded as the political cradle of the Netherlands.
As part of a plan to revamp the Court Quarter as a cultural area,the municipality decided to refurbish the Cloister Garden adjoiningthe Hof, which had fallen into disrepair. The plan’s main goal wasto give the historic site the elegant look it deserved, and to makethis space a quiet, relaxing haven.
This required, above all, turning the courtyard’s separatecompartments into a single space with clear entrances andunobstructed views. A further aim in designing the layout alongthese lines was to discourage drunks and drug addicts from hangingabout. The municipal plan called for a “green courtyard” with asimple layout, high-quality materials and meticulous detailing.
To frame the courtyard as a whole, the raised lawn’s outer edgesrun roughly along the perimeter, leaving a wide path in between forpeople to walk around its outer edge. The lawn seems to have beenripped apart in two halves, opening up an irregular space inbetween, where people can walk and sit under several existing largetrees. One half of the lawn has been slightly rotated with respectto the other half to align the two halves with the layout of thesurrounding buildings. Stone slabs, 150 centimeters wide, have beenplaced along the edges of the ostensible tear, accentuating thedivergence between the two halves and providing space to sit.Vertical sheets of corten steel frame the rest of the lawn.
The wide path that runs between the raised lawn and the perimeter,which is mainly formed by backyard fences, has been paved butotherwise left open. The only elements that were added along thepath are a number of shrubs—magnolias, dogwoods, hawthorns andshadbushes—to connect the public lawn with the more privateatmosphere of the gardens surrounding it.
The entire Cloister Garden is lit fairly evenly by a small numberof unpretentious eight-metre-high poles fitted withfloodlights.
