The building complex in which the government of the Province of North-Holland is housed, has recently been transformed. Extensions of the fifties and sixties which divided park and garden have been demolished and the extensive open air parking area is relocated under ground.

The park and the garden have always belonged spatially to each other but over the centuries have developed differently and have grown more and more apart as separate areas. The garden has, besides an area with an open park like atmosphere, also a distinctive wild and wooded area with high ecological value.

At long last the relationship between the garden and the park could be restored.










A fence between the two areas, necessary for the protection of these government buildings, cuts right through the vast open space connecting the garden and the park. In that way the attention is not drawn to this fence. The relaxed curved pattern of pathways on both sides reinforces this effect.

The relationship between the park like and introvert wooded area in the garden is strengthened by making the transition between both atmospheres more gradual. Furthermore this reltionship is reinforced by extending the pattern of curvilinear pathways in the park area into the woods and by making a difference between closed areas under the trees with mainly evergreen shrubs and more open areas with low groundcovering.








In the Frederikspark the original concept of Jan David Zocher was restored. A vast open interior space surrounded by a more closed and intimate area created by the planting of trees and large clumps of shrubbery in which are a villa with garden. The so called house of the doctor, connected to the building complex of the Province is considered one of them and treated in the same way.

















Client
Provincie Noord-Holland

In collaboration with
SmitsRinsma, engineering

Delva Landscape Architects

Claus en Kaan Architecten
now Felix Claus Dick van Wageningen
Architecten

Photography
Emilio Troncoso Larrain