
Eden






Amelia Bright, Executive Director, Grosvenor Group London Estate: “We are delighted to be working with Hagen Hinderdael to bring Grosvenor’s commitments to community and sustainability to life through Eden in Halkin Arcade. Halkin Arcade is already a neighbourhood hub that is used by many of our local community, and Eden takes this one step further, giving Belgravia residents and visitors a place to learn about and enjoy the benefits of urban greening and biodiversity”.

Sofia Hagen, Co-Founder of HagenHinderdael: “Eden is an interactive installation created to emphasize the fact that we need to restore our relationship with nature as our support system. Nature is a healing force, as will be indicated in the many facts throughout the installation. But if we stop caring for it we won’t receive any care in return. By creating a micro-ecosystem including an urban “forest” and meadow, visitors will be encouraged to enter Eden for a full reset, bathe in the urban forest, and take away their own bag of seeds to continue their individual urban forestry experience at home”.
Lucy Jones, Author of Losing Eden: “As every passing generation becomes a little more detached from nature, they feel less personally invested in preserving plants and animals they have never seen and cannot name. We do not fully understand the psychological cost of mass extinctions and a warming planet, or the psychic suffering inflicted in a world where access to green spaces is often a luxury”.

David H. Invgar, Neurophysiologist: “It is necessary to be outside for our brains to be stimulated from the flow of sound, light, shapes and colours that nature provides, especially between the ages of three to six, when the energy flow in the human brain is at its greatest”.
Project details
Design: HagenHinderdael
Project Location: Halkin Arcade, Belgravia, London, United Kingdom
Typology: Installation
Built: 4th September – 31st October 2020
Art Consultant / Project Director: Artistic Statements / Zoë Allen
Partner: The Grosvenor Group
Construction: OOO, Out of Order Design
Horticulturists and Plant Suppliers: CLGC, Central London Garden Company
Reclaimed Timber Suppliers: Solowood Recycling

HagenHinderdael
Trained as architects and urban designers, Sofia Hagen and Lisa Hinderdael pursue a creative approach that explores the relationship of immersive art and biophilic design. Merging sustainable materials with traditional craftsmanship and innovative technology, they produce elements, feature installations, and placemaking schemes that push the boundaries of engineering whilst bearing the incentive of a continuous afterlife. As a creative practice, beyond their conceptual visions they are also fundamentally grounded in how to be earth-conscious designers of the future: always designing with the ethos of a circular economy in mind. HagenHinderdael aim to inspire future generations into what we can do when we think outside of the box and bring our narrative full circle.