The Urban Forest Hotel Amsterdam is a hotel where guests, Amsterdammers and other visitors will find a small but profoundly natural forest of native trees within the city. It is a space where human and non-human animals can come and live together. Located besides the Artis zoo, it is a place that questions the future of the zoo and our relationship as humans to nature. The hotel tries to nurture empathy for the environment that we humans share with our fellow denizens of the natural world. The project’s situation within the city of Amsterdam tells that a forest does not solely belong to that other countryside, but that it can be an integral and essential part of the city.

To the city and its citizens, both human and non-human, the forest hotel offers a place to stay, in nature. The forest of native trees is beneficial to the environment as it regenerates land, reduces urban heat stress, improves the local air quality and water storage capacity, and supports native species of animals and other organisms. These themes touch upon the very basis of our existence: we humans are fully reliant on all other life. Understanding, protecting and supporting biodiversity is therefore vital to our wellbeing and economy. This awareness is essential in moving towards the socially just and ecologically safe space of the Doughnut, the economic model that has been developed by economist Kate Raworth and which has been adopted by the City of Amsterdam.

Moreover we humans find pleasure, wonder and peace in nature. My hotel aims to offer a place where one can find these things, and where one can experience living in togetherness with other human and non-human animals.