Tulip Court

Context

As part of a school assignment, a group of classmates and I got in touch with a client from the Philosophy and Professional Practice association. They had been talking with higher-ups from the province to discuss the sustainability and impact of tulip farming. Many people are not aware of it, but farming tulips year in year out has a pretty strong footprint on everything from the soil to the ground water to the very air. As a project, we were tasked to come up with a way of making people more aware of the environmental implications, spefically stakeholders in the tulip business and tourists visiting Keukenhof (the large tulip fields in the Netherlands). Apart from this general guideline, the task was open-ended, and we could design anything that we would like.

Our Solution

After weeks of research and concept drafting, we ended up designing a short immersive exhibition called the Tulip Court. In this immersive experience, visitors are taken on an emotional journey: from seeing the beauty of tulips, to the possible bleak future if we don't take care of them. As the person in the group with skills in 3D design and visualisation, I made a complete 3D walkthrough of our concept to show our stakeholders the atmosphere of being in the installation's various rooms.

Watch the full video:

The Exhibition in Detail

In the first part of the exhibition, the visitors are shown all the beauty and good vibes that they already know tulips for. There's also a little interactive part where kids can poke their heads through holes in the floor and see what it would feel like to live as a little tulip.

After that, the participants can go in two different directions. If they go left, they are met with the underwater room. This room looks tranquil enough at first glance. But when the visitors walk deeper into the room, they realise that wherever they walked, they left a trail of oil and trash in the ocean, showing their impact on the environment, even if uncounscious.

If the visitor chose to go left, they are met with the Tulip Judge, sentencing anyone who has brought harm upon the tulips. Here visitors can enter the prison cell of the defendant from the back, making it a great funny photo spot.

In the Dead Tulip Field, the beauty of the tulips gives way to a dark future where the soil became unfit for them to grow. All the tulips have died and given way to a depressing cemetery littered with withering plants.

After that moment of sadness and reflection, the visitor's spirits are lifted once again. In the Apology Room, they can write positive messages to the tulips and promise they'll take better care of the environment. These messages and drawings are then projected onto the wall of the room for the rest of the participants to see afterwards.

The Making of the Video

The making of the video was quite a challenge in and of itself. When the first designs came along, I had planned to just make a few renders as images. But as we progressed, the idea of making a full walkthrough started floating in the air. And almost in the very end right before our client presentation, we pulled the trigger and I worked tirelessly to get this project done within the huge timecrunch. And I ended up finishing it! It's a bit rough around the edges and not nearly as polished as I usually like my renders to be, but it was a good experience to get me to leave my perfectionism behind and make something that just worked.

The project also really forced me to do the best with what I had available. For example, a lot of the models such as the tulips and garbage were collected from the internet (with permission obtained from the creators). It also taught me how to make full multi-room setpieces and move smoothly between them, which will prove immensely useful in the future during architecture and other adjacent projects.