Garden.Eden.Church . Hanover

Conception and realization of the main project of the "Garden Region Hannover - 2009" for the Garten.Eden.Kirche (with Anne Nissen - visual artist . Hannover).

A glowing cocoon in the palm forest



During the 2009 Garden Year of the Hanover Garden Region, a very special garden art exhibition can be seen in the Christuskirche in Nordstadt: the Garden.Eden.Church.



From Easter Sunday to Thanksgiving, the imposing church interior will be transformed into a lushly planted Garden of Eden. The Hanover-based open space architecture firm Grün plan and artist Anne Nissen won the competition organized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in March 2008. Construction work began at the beginning of February 2009, and the project was officially opened on Easter Sunday with a festive church service; over 20,000 visitors saw the exhibition in the first two months.



At the center of the Garden of Eden Church is an eight-meter-high, semi-transparent "cocoon" covered with delicate gauze, woven from a filigree aluminum tube mesh - a calm and contemplative space within a space that plays around the mighty columns of the darkened nave and displays slowly changing light projections on its surface. A place of paradisiacal silence that glows and whose interior vaguely shines through to the outside. Only an old olive tree framed in natural stone and the water basin symbolizing the source of life and illuminated with human images are located in this space of transformation filled with white quartz sand.



The shape and structure for the "cocoon" was found on the model, transferred to CAD and statically calculated. Base points and pipe connections were developed in detail. A total of 680 meters of pipe were calculated, pre-bent, located and installed by our project team, arch by arch, in the church interior. The artist sewed 1,000 square meters of gauze, which was stretched over the "cocoon" as a transparent cover.



Lush planting surrounds the interior - palm trees up to 7 meters high, huge strelizias, large-leaved banana plants and fine-twigged centiums with a dense, diverse underplanting. Orchid and calla lilies glow in the semi-darkness. Film sequences are projected into four steel pools filled with CO2 mist, symbolizing the streams of paradise, and the mist magically shines through the surrounding greenery.

60 large potted plants were leased from Freiburg's municipal nursery for the duration of the exhibition, while a further 1,200 plants were planted by the landscape architects themselves. At night, the plants receive their assimilation light; during the day, the video projections and subtle spotlights give the paradise garden an atmospheric glow.