Change house The Green Turn opens circular hotel with 30 art rooms

The Green Exit , the change house for the Dutch economy, will officially open its circular hotel, whose 30 rooms have been decorated by artists, on Saturday 4 October 2025. This will be done by all the builders and everyone who has contributed in recent months to the metamorphosis of the former military school in Bussum into the most circular restaurant, school, hotel, office, work and meeting complex in the Netherlands.

It may be World Animal Day, but The Green Exit celebrates World No Animal Day on Saturday. "How nice it is to have the premises opened by all the people who made it. Not the hot shots, but the doers," states founder and instigator Lucas Mol of The Green Turn. 

The circular mini-village sat for the past six years in a former barracks and AZC, a few hundred metres away. In the converted military school, Mol says it is working on the new economy, teaching business people and other visitors to eat differently, think differently, do business differently and now sleep differently. 

250 trial sleepers wanted 

On 20 September, the building was opened by all staff and family. On Saturday, 4 October, the hotel will officially open. The 30 rooms have been and will be decorated by 30 different artists using circularity and nature as a starting point. Barend Bootsma, for instance, designed the ' 'Mush Room' , where you sleep among walls, objects and sculptures made of mushrooms. Antoine Peters designed a ' walk-in forest' : a forest of tree-length legs wedged between floor and ceiling, as a counterpart to a walk-in closet. Simone Post created a hotel room that appears to be high among the treetops, with expansive views, as if you were sitting in a tree yourself. Ten-year-old artist Alf - who is already being compared to Kandinsky, Haring or Miró - transformed his hotel room ' 'Grow Up' into a living landscape. 

Of the 30 rooms, 23 are now ready. ,,The idea is to start trial runs in the month of October and get feedback from our guests. That is why we are looking for 250 trial sleepers," says Mol. 

World's most expensive ceiling 

The entire complex was largely remodelled using recycled and second-hand materials. Balustrades were made from old crowd barriers, furniture came from a discontinued Chinese-Indonesian restaurant, and millions in discarded banknotes from the German Bundesbank were used for the insulation material in the café's ceiling. "So we have the most expensive ceiling in the world," Mol says jokingly. 

Workshop for new economy 

In addition to the hotel, plant-based restaurant, flex workplaces and offices, De Groene Afslag has a Change School where lectures and seminars are available. These include Oxford professor Kate Raworth's 'donut economy', Kees Klomp's 'meaning economy' or Katherine Trebeck's 'welfare economy' - all models that strive for a new economy that does less damage to the planet and its inhabitants. 

Next week, The Green Turn also opens its Workshop for that new economy. That is a space where innovators, boosters, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, thinkers and investors get to work on solutions for the sustainable transition. Two investment funds are also located on that floor. ,,We are trying to create a kind of fertile humus layer here where thinkers, doers and financiers meet," says Mol. 

The design for The New Green Exit is by interior designer Sanne Oomen, Mol's partner, and RAU Architects. Earlier this year, they won the German Design Award 2025 in the Excellent Architecture category.