RIANNE van SETTEN - 02 Community Garden Design

Community Garden Design

Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

A Local Neighbourhood community has been looking since 2010 to create a community garden. With the help of regional funds (KNHM foundation), they aim to transform a local car garage into a semi-public garden and community center.

Date: October 2020

Client: Citizen group De Franse Hof, see website

Made for: Arcadis

Project status: construction to commence in 2024

This project was started because several citizens of a neighbourhood, live in a housing block with a garage filling the inside. This garage will be shut down in the coming years and the property will be sold, the surrounding residents of this area would like to buy this property with the help of several foundations. The idea is to develop this property into a community space that is open to the public with an organic and DIY touch. This project is done during my internship at Arcadis in the Netherlands along with people from Arcadis and the citizen initiative. The entire project is run by the internship company, the images shown are created in the assignment of the internship company unless mentioned otherwise.

Several cross-sections were drafted to show the residents the space that would be freed up from removing the garage. it was important to show the different heights in these cross-sections as they will play a role in the future concerning private + public relations and social security.

Several mood boards were created to illustrate the ideas of the people and to be able to talk and discuss their wants and needs. These mood boards laid the foundation for the eventual design.

My main task of me was to create the different visualizations and make a 3D model of the design. As an intern, my task was to represent the citizens and push for their ideas instead of compromising. This place will be used as a community garden that is at certain times accessible to the public. The actual first steps on site will start hopefully by 2023.

I used Sketchup and AutoCAD to create an accurate model of the current situation. Within this model, the sketch was placed and the borders massed up.

After the Sketchup model of the surroundings had been created the design was texturised and first communicated to the members of the initiatives.

Then the model was imported to Lumion in which accurate textures and planting were added. Lumion offers still renders and video rendering.

This clip will show you a small walkthrough of the garden.