Werkplaats Buijtenland

Werkplaats Buijtenland, an initiative in which recreation goes hand in hand with sustainable agrarian production and consumption in The Buijtenland area of Rhoon,

a unique polder landscape that borders Rotterdam. Like many green areas located close to big cities, this 600-hectare green landscape will change significantly in the near future because of the demand for recreation from the city and region. Together with initiators Ester van de Wiel and Marnix Tavenier, Henriette Waal examined the recreational potential of the area.

Five tools were developed that form a kit for ‘processing’ Buijtenland, because recreating can mean so much more than sitting on a park bench, cycling or walking along a path.‘Doing’ things in the landscape allows it to be experienced to the full.

Henriette designed a Buijten Brewery, a mobile installation to make apple juice, cider and calvados from the thousands of kilograms of waste (windfalls from the historical orchards) in the area. Other newly developed mobile recreational tools are the Buijten Kitchen (a kitchen that experiments with cooking on wood and where you can taste the landscape), the Buijten Bed (the archetypical Dutch mobile home installed on an agrarian trailer so that you can sleep on the farmland), the Buijten Nursery (a nursery that will harvest for the city of Rotterdam) and the Buijten Pathways (which can be discovered using a hiking guide that includes a legend of flora and fauna).