veenweide atelier

For centuries, the Frisian landscape was characterised by meadows, ditches, mounds, and characteristic farms. But in recent years, the landscape is changing drastically due to the impact of climate change. Especially around the peat meadow area, concerns are high: subsidence, desiccation, declining biodiversity and increasing CO₂ emissions are pressing challenges. Precisely here, a different story is also unfolding: a story of resilience and renewal. From 24 May to 26 October 2025, the Fries Museum and Arcadia present the exhibition Veenweide Atelier: Designs for subsiding peatland. In this exhibition, visitors will discover, through art and design, new ways of living in this landscape. The research project Veenweide Atelier, under the artistic direction of artist and eco-social designer Henriëtte Waal, develops innovative proposals for the peat meadow area. Together with farmers, residents, scientists and designers, it outlines a future in which the peat meadow area remains liveable - for the peat itself, the people who work and inhabit the land and for all kinds of non-human species that depend on it.

Peat is important for our planet's species diversity and acts as a natural repository of CO₂. With more than 90,000 hectares, the Frisian peat meadow area is the largest contiguous peat landscape in the Netherlands. Peat extraction, intensive agriculture and dairy farming have caused the peat in this area to rapidly dry out and the land to sink. To reverse this process, a goal has been set to restore half of the drained peatlands by 2050. This will be done by raising water levels, rewetting the landscape and enhancing species diversity.

But does this mean the end of the peatland, or can it be a new beginning? How can designers, farmers, scientists, policymakers and residents themselves join forces? What happens when they work together on new insights, quality and design language for these vulnerable areas?

The Veenweide Atelier (Peat Meadow Atelier) brings together internationally renowned designers and local experts through an eco-social and integrated design approach. The exhibition presents three forward-thinking case studies: a monumental farmhouse in the middle of the peatlands where residents and nature managers work together on a sustainable redevelopment that does justice to the beauty of farming heritage (i.c.w. OOZE Architects and It Fryske Gea), collaborating with bacteria from the soil to colour locally produced textiles in search of new models for the biotech economy (i. s.m. Faber Futures, Family Boon and Biobased Economy Knowledge Centre of Hanze University of Applied Sciences) and a scalable furniture collection made from wet crops grown on a peat water farm (i.s.m. Friso Wiersma, Arno Kalfsvel, Ashok Bhadra, Tjeerd Veenhoven, Jasper van Belle). Material innovation, imagination, interdisciplinary collaboration and community building come together in this exhibition, as does the urgent need to address the state of our peatland.