KU Leuven: 600 years of KU Leuven gets its first eye-catcher with ‘Walking Garden’ at Arenberg Castle
In 2025, KU Leuven will celebrate its 600th anniversary. A birthday that the university is already fully preparing at the moment. 2025 will be a festive year with exhibitions, celebrations and all kinds of retrospectives and previews. But with the celebration, the university also wants to leave a lasting impression on the city with which it is so closely associated. For example, a special work of art by artist duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh will be in the Arenberg castle park. ‘Dwaaltuin’, on a new piece of park at the current location of the De Molen car park along Celestijnenlaan, will be an installation where art and science will literally grow together. The work will also become the cornerstone of a completely new interpretation of the public space around Arenberg Castle.
600 years KU Leuven
On December 9, 1425, Pope Martin V signed the bull that established the foundation of KU Leuven. 2025, the year in which the university celebrates its 600th anniversary, will therefore be a special year of celebration.
“We will reflect on our rich history. Discover, unravel and fathom through six centuries. Six centuries of excellent education and social commitment. But we will also look ahead to the university of the future. Because we will continue to search, share knowledge and push boundaries.”
Rector Luc Sels
It will be a year full of art, exhibitions, science, research, heritage, events and lectures. It will be a party for and by the university and its students, but also for alumni, Leuven, Flanders, and why not: the world. We also work closely with our sister university in Louvain-la-Neuve, who join the celebrations.
wandering garden
Wandering Garden at the Arenberg Park will be the first eye-catcher of that birthday party. It becomes an open maze. A composition of curved steel grids with a transparent structure. A wide variety of creepers will then color the steel canvas. Nature will take over the architecture.
“The project is thus at the crossroads of art and landscape. It focuses on a layered identity. It refers to mythological mazes and formal historical gardens. It is a folly and a scientific-botanical collection, an architectural sculpture and a play element, a passage space and a meeting place. These various layers merge into a contemporary, artistic addition to the centuries-old park”, says the designer duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh .
On the one hand, a wandering garden is a ‘garden’: a green and growing place, a piece of controlled nature. A place where seasons come and go, where the passage of time becomes visible. But on the other hand, you will also find the word ‘wandering’ in it.
“To me, wandering stands for searching with the openness to be amazed by what you find on your way,” says rector Luc Sels . “The term ‘wandering’ also has a special meaning for the university. It was former rector Pieter De Somer who spoke in a 1985 speech to Pope John Paul II about the necessity of ‘the freedom to wander’. So there is no academic freedom without wandering.”
City and University
The work of art also fits into a long tradition in which the university also fills in the public space in the city artistically. Think of the ‘Fonske’ on De Somerplein, or the beetle on Ladeuzeplein.
“No KU Leuven without Leuven, but also no Leuven without KU Leuven. We will celebrate that six centuries of collaboration in 2025. With this Wandering Garden, that sustainable bond gets a new eye-catcher. It will be a real landmark, a living meeting place for young and old, for students and residents,” says Leuven mayor Mohamed Ridouani .
Dwaaltuin is a project with roots in the Faculty of Engineering Science, which also provides training as an engineer-architect and where Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh are alumni. But the project will have broad ramifications across the university. For example, the KU Leuven Plant Institute will help determine which plants are best suited for the project and monitor the garden from the start. Dwaaltuin also fits in with a broader vision of the Living Campus concept, which KU Leuven and the faculties in Heverlee also endorse.
“A Living Campus facilitates meetings between all users of our campuses. Ideas grow bottom-up for inspiring places where cross-pollination is possible. Sustainable and green. At the same time, the Living Campus is an invitation to meet up: to come together in a casual way. In that sense, Dwaaltuin is a clear statement: a car park makes way for peace and greenery”, says Peter Van Puyvelde, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Science .