Bas Smets’ Water Garden maps a route towards climate resilience at the Vitra Campus

A new addition to the Vitra Campus, 'Water Garden' by Bas Smets, marks the start of summer for the celebrated furniture manufacturer and its famous headquarters on the Swiss-German border. Launched today (17 June 2026), during Art Basel, the design is a highly site-specific piece by the Belgian landscape architect – and one that is more than it might initially seem.

It's been a tradition for the Vitra home 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.

Explore Bas Smets’ Water Garden at the Vitra Campus

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. It formed a thoughtful response to Vitra's mission to rewild its home.

'The first building on the 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 building, 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 Garden 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-scale ceramic sculptures by designer Hella Jongerius – part of her Angry Animals series – are set to be installed as fountains. Plans won't stop there, Fehlbaum explains. Right now, a fish-shaped bench by Doshi and a small, original demountable 4x4 prefabricated house by Jean Prouvé are also positioned by the pond.

'With the Oudolf Garden 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.'

The Water Garden opens to the public on 17 June 2026 at Vitra Campus, Charles-Eames-Straße 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein, Germany

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