Green in the City #1 Vreewijk Garden Suburb, Rotterdam
With the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning as a point of departure, theatre and radio producer Naomi Steijger visits the Vreewijk neighbourhood in Rotterdam and talks to designers, archive experts and residents about greenery in this garden suburb. First in a series of podcasts under the name Green in the City.
5 May 2021
A century ago, in the 1920s, the garden suburb Vreewijk was built in Rotterdam. Its buildings and green areas were conceived and implemented together, making it a special residential area: the first tuindorp (literally,"garden village") in the Netherlands. The archive collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut includes photos and design drawings that display this interweaving of architecture and greenery, as well as documents that reveal its inspiration in the garden city ideals that arrived from England at the beginning of the 20th century.
The episode is also available on various podcast apps and platforms such as Podbean, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
Archive Explorations: Green in the City
Under the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are more aware than ever of the relaxing and healing power of the greenery around us. Yet the idea that has a positive effect on our physical and mental health is not new: much of the planning of greenery in the Netherlands is based on this idea. In the series Green in the City, part of Archive Explorations various radio broadcasters go on a mission to find answers to the questions: how have garden and landscape architects and urban planners dealt with the concept over the years? What were their views, and how do we see them now?