Situated in front of the Vitra Design Museum, the Water Garden enriches the Vitra Campus with water, biodiversity and new places to linger. Fed by rainwater collected from the surrounding roofs, the garden creates a cooling microclimate and a diverse habitat for plants and animals. It was developed as part of a multi-year collaboration with the Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets, aimed at making the Vitra Campus more climate-resilient.

It’s been a tradition for the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein to unveil an exciting new project on its campus every summer. Water Garden follows Vitra’s reveal last year of Doshi Retreat, 2024’s Khudi Bari, and 2023’s Tane Garden House. This time, the offering is the result of a long and ongoing collaboration between Smets and the manufacturer. The aim? To make the latter’s large campus, full of landmark architecture, more climate resilient.

The patch of land that is now transformed, in true Smets-style, into the fresh, living, breathing ecosystem that is the Water Garden, sits right by Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum. It all started in 2023, when Smets proposed planting 8,000 young trees across the site in order to establish “micro-forests” based on the principles of Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who argued for the restoration of ecosystems by mimicking the way natural forests grow and evolve.

“The first building on the Vitra Campus was a factory and office building completed in 1954. It was built on what had previously been a garden. So, the campus began with the destruction of a beautiful natural site. And over the following decades, with the expansion of factory space, many cherry trees disappeared without anyone questioning the loss,” says Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus at Vitra.

“A shift in thinking began in 1994 with Tadao Ando‘s Conference Pavilion, which was placed within a cherry orchard so carefully that only three trees had to be removed. This marked the first moment when the relationship between architecture and nature was reconsidered on the campus. Tree planting began in front of the VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron in 2010, followed by the first comprehensive landscape plan developed with Günther Vogt around 2015. But the true breakthrough came with the Oudolf Garten in 2021 – a project that felt like a reconciliation with the earlier decades of destruction. With the garden as a new point of reference, every aspect of the campus was re-examined through a different lens.”

The Water Garden plot is centred on a large pond. It is wrapped in trees and aquatic vegetation, with an emphasis on biodiversity and resilience, as the species were carefully positioned and selected to attract birds and support fish, allowing wildlife to thrive within the campus. Some 500 cubic metres of earth were dug out to make the pond, and were then used to make the berm surrounding it.

“It is this beautiful combination of landscape architecture and art,” Smets says, highlighting the way he hopes his work will grow to play a role within the wider campus, amid the classic works by the likes of Gehry, Ando, Balkrishna Doshi, Zaha Hadid and more. Smets continues to explain: “The landscape is also something that connects all these objects, which changes the relationship [between them].”

Working with Vitra was an exciting challenge and fruitful collaboration for Smets. “I love the idea that they’re so used to testing a chair before it goes into the market [and] I thought, ‘OK, let’s prototype a landscape’, and they wanted me to do it,” he says. “No city would want you to prototype. They want the real thing now, right?”

More is yet to come. Beyond the growth and care of the wider project across the site, at Water Garden, three large ceramic sculptures by designer Hella Jongerius – part of her “Angry Animals” series – are installed as fountains. Plans won’t stop there, Fehlbaum explains. A fish-shaped bench by Doshi and a small prefabricated house by architect and designer Jean Prouvé – a re-edition of an original Maison Démontable 4x4 – are also positioned along the path surrounding the pond.

“With the Oudolf Garten in mind, we looked at all aspects of the campus with new eyes,” says Fehlbaum. “It was at this moment that Bas entered the picture. He analysed the entire site and proposed a long-term ecological strategy that would gradually transform the campus biosphere. The first visible result is the Miyawaki Forest, followed by the Water Garden. More steps will follow: reducing paved surfaces, planting additional Miyawaki forests, and continuing to restore biodiversity across the grounds.”