Even industrial sites deserve a quality environment, and especially in such places with a strong spirit, exceptional scale and the smell of steel, one often doesn’t have to go that far for beauty.

The ‘slightly different’ garden is located right on the factory site and is a paraphrase of the company’s field and core business – deep foundation using piles – into an architectural and artistic design.

In this industrial “landscape” we recycled steel drill pipes that had been taken out of production. On our first visit, we were struck by the monumentality and crudeness of the machines, as well as a certain ‘decorativeness’ of the drilling tips and heads. Their morphology and directly inspired us to create simple perforations in the raw steel. It was then enough to place the pipes of different diameters in the plantings in the correct formation. The composition of the three differently sized tubes, the coarse rusting material, the contrast with the fine texture of the grasses in the undergrowth… The result creates a sculptural work from a previously waste material.

We attach great importance to this moment when something that is already in place is successfully incorporated into the design. A seemingly obvious thing that allows us to get projects done in an economically sensible way, minimising the carbon footprint associated with, for example, transporting heavy loads.
Machine or sculpture? An industrial site or a gallery? The magic of large scale, the contrast of rough material and rust with the delicate bloom of planting. Decay and decay with a hint of something unspoken in the midst of a flowerbed full of life.

Corroded steel is used as a connecting element, a medium that makes sense here and is permeated throughout the surroundings of the office building.

The factory garden is used for quick glances while running errands around the grounds, to welcome you on your way to work or a meeting, and to say goodbye when you return home. The garden doesn’t just have to be at home, it can also make the pro-environment at work – the place where we spend almost half of our waking and productive lives.

Sculptures in the green don’t just do the trick during working hours; at dusk, the stage lights come on and we find ourselves in an otherworldly world surrounded by the beauty of raw material in an industrial setting.

The evening scene will be appreciated not only by the morning nightingales and night owls, but during the short winter days by anyone who knows the ‘still dark to work – already dark from work’ mode.

Realisations in landscape architecture have to mature once established and it is beautiful to see how the space changes with time as the vegetation grows, so does our joy…