The complex German-Polish relationship marks the conceptual starting point of our landscape design for the German Embassy Garden located in Warsaw. In order to translate historical awareness in the an appropriate landscape, we sought to create an unobtrusive design which maintains the original atmospheric condition of the site – including the existing vegetation and the proximity towards the nearby park – whilst setting a man-made counterpart to the seemingly harmonically growing nature on the site.

Our design carefully frames the stout new building between trees, lawns and bushes, simultaneously avoiding comfort using surprising artificial elements, which mask themselves in the natural structures. Mimicry and concealment hence, become key themes that conjure this garden and investigate the relationship between artificial and natural elements in landscape design. The fact that few features in the garden are clearly natural or clearly artificial but mostly combine both qualities constitutes a ludic and at times suspenseful mixture: A network of green Astroturf paths lay hidden in the green lawn, bright green benches “hide” in the lawns and plastic structures imitate natural materiality.

The facade of the building, which is composed of green concrete combined with a floral pattern, seamlessly blends into the upward-climbing foliage. An element that exposes the ironic potential of cutting through the multi-layered bonds of nature and artificial elements is a fake plastic lake, which was developed in partnership with Berlin artist Rainer Splitt.