Originally the location was a large country estate called Rhijnhof. The 18th century country house still stands along the Rhine. In 1910 the estate became a cemetery. The site was then enlarged and a new part was constructed at the entrance. The Echo sculpture was developed for the round pond at the entrance. It is located at the furthest point of the axis from the old estate house on the Rhine that connects the old and the new parts of the Rhijnhof cemetery. The sculpture was inspired by the gazebos, tea houses and aviaries that were part of estates in the 18th century. Slender white columns support a geodesic cupola formed from triangular elements. The steel construction of around 4.5 metres in height stands out against the green environment, giving the impression of an imaginary pavilion that unites the past and the present.
Between 2009 and 2015 Wijken voor Kunst organized art projects in neighbourhoods that are changing. The Slaaghwijk district of Leiden is a ‘problem area’. Many different parties are working together to make this a socially stronger area. When the area was originally built, it was done with the best of intentions, but is an area where it is difficult to find your way through the monotonous urban planning design and where there is little involvement with the living space. Wijken voor Kunst aims to improve the social cohesion of the neighbourhood by introducing cultural elements. Together with Fleur van den Berg and Merijn Tinga, I developed the art vision VIAVIA for the Slaaghwijk. The core of this vision was formed by the concepts of orientation and identity.
In developing VIAVIA I focused on the idea of ‘address’, highlighting the question: Where am I? It is a very green neighbourhood; the blocks of flats are in a kind of park, but the street names and numbers are not at all clear. Not only this, the flats are difficult to distinguish from one another. Each apartment building was therefore given its own name, based on the street names: names of birds of prey such as the sparrow hawk, the goshawk, the condor and the crow. These names or the sounds made by the birds have been put on the roofs in Latin so as to make it possible to recognise the place where you live or where you need to be, creating a roof landscape of texts set off against the sky.
Flown is an installation about death. The Rhijnhof Cemetery, a green oasis of the dead, is located on the outskirts of Leiden. People have been buried at Rhijnhof since 1910, and after ten or twenty years their graves are cleared. How many people have been buried here in the history of the cemetery? Where are their souls? Are they still remembered, or have their memories faded with time?
The Flown installation is about the circle of life and death, the concrete and metaphorical role played by nature in this process. It is inspired by the Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae), another passer by at Rhijnhof. This tiny butterfly breeds rapidly, passing through between two and four generations in a single year. A glass display case tells the story of the Cabbage White, presenting the statistics of the wandering souls, the grave records and the prepared butterflies. The glass display case has a green background, on which the poem ‘The unsculpted image’ by Michael Zeeman can be read. In the large hall, the butterflies appear as intangible points of light with trembling wings on the 9-metre long wall. View the film on YouTube
Oldershove is a residential complex consisting of a nursing home and independent accommodation for the elderly. The courtyard of Oldershove has been created along clean lines of construction. From the building a straight line of sight extends into the garden. The site shows the remains of excavations of a Roman farm, and the Zebra fountain is inspired by mosaic floors from this period. The Zebra (5 x 11 metres), that stands in this line of sight, is surrounded by a square of lime trees. The floor is made up of black and white granite plates, each strip 5 metres long and one metre wide. Fountains set into the natural stone spray water in a constantly changing rhythm, giving the impression that the sprays are dancing and springing back and forth over the Zebra, hopping and skipping, creating a floor that is full of life and movement.
Oldershove is a residential complex, comprising a nursing home and independent accommodation for the elderly. In the hall of the independent homes, bordering on a gallery, an entrance hall has been made in a high glass façade with a view of the assembly place for waste containers and the car lift. The façade, around 6 metres high and 3 metres wide, is divided into oblong segments with a door in the centre. The distribution of the frames is iconic and static. To create a contrast, highly magnified images of butterflies have been placed between the glass panels. The butterflies give the impression of flying against the glass or adhering to it. By presenting the tiny butterflies as extremely large, they are transformed almost into beasts. Every detail of them can be seen. They are lovely insects with beautiful colours, but by magnifying them they loom large and take on a different persona. The butterfly is the symbol of the cycle of life and change; the insect evolves from caterpillar to butterfly, a fascinating process. The butterflies flutter across the windows and give a new dimension to this location.
There is a section of meadow 250 metres long and 25 metres wide alongside a dike and a main road, bordering the agrarian landscape of Ooijpolder and a wood of poplars. It forms in fact the edge to the cycle path. This was once the site of a small village and heavy fighting took place here during World War II. It is a place to stand and contemplate, allowing the landscape to work its effect on you and then to continue on your own path; it is more of a visual location than a place to stay. The suggestion was to create a concentrated spot that would appeal to the imagination. The solitary tree of the small wood typifies the empty agrarian landscape. The adjoining woods would be continued in the meadow so as to create a sense of unity, but also of contrast. Dead trees would be planted in the meadow, acquiring a second life as ‘standing wood’. They would be part of a habitat of dead wood, a whole wood made up of sculptures in the polder. Dead trees often take on very beautiful shapes as they lose their bark and branches in the process of decay. These trees stand in the meadow like an eccentric tree formation, echoing the fringe of the forest.
The ‘Koorenspoor’ comprises a number of buildings in which the primary school, the childcare centre and the administration office are accommodated. The buildings are connected by a covered walkway 140 metres long, made up of a wooden roof, supported by steel columns. This covered walkway is in the school square where the children play. It is a functional element, and is also used in their games. The idea behind this work is to draw one’s gaze upwards. There are glass panels at three-metre intervals in the roof of the walkway depicting sections from the world map. You can see the clouds, birds and aircraft as well as other parts of the world map through the glass windows. Sunlight projects the maps as spots of colour on the ground. This is a playful way of stimulating the the children’s imagination and giving them an awareness of being part of a greater whole.
In 2004/2005 Stroom organised ‘The sea, the shore and the harbour’. The project aimed to explore the meaning of the sea as public space, taken from all kinds of disciplines, backgrounds and experiences. At the same time, the North Sea culture was expressed in images, in the form of sea journeys, artists’ contributions, architecture workshops and an exhibition. 1001 ‘concepts’ relating to the North Sea were collected in a book: The Enseaclopaedia.
The ‘Extreme weather at sea’ project was devised and implemented, inspired by a photo from 1963 in which I and my family are standing on the frozen North Sea. The sea and the weather are inextricably linked. The plan was to produce images of memories of extreme weather and so to visualise a part of the memory of the coast. Together with the Haagsche Courant, an appeal was made to the public asking them to submit photos and stories of extreme weather at sea. The appeal was also spread in the form of postcards. Some 60 items were submitted, depicting storm, ice, wind and sometimes heat. With a view to the coming climate change, I interviewed experts from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, about the future of the coast and climate. Does this photo collection represent a true future image or not? The photos selected were printed on a poster. The related stories and the texts about the project, the coast and the climate are on the reverse. But that frozen North Sea will never return.
Veenendaal is lowlying in the Gelderland valley between two hilly landscapes. During heavy rainfall some back gardens fill with water. Dragonder Oost is a new neighbourhood to be built in the moorland landscape that borders the municipality of Veenendaal. The proposal was to achieve a different experience of the urban landscape, not on the ground, but high up. At diverse spots in the area, wooden walk bridges would be constructed for one or more persons, where visitors could pause for a while. Beside the bridges, native trees, such as the alder have been planted, creating fragments of a landscape on poles: never before have you been able to stand so close to the foliage of the crown of a tree, raised above the marshy ground.
A small glasshouse (1.95 x 1.95 x 1.95m) has been placed in the Hortus botanicus. It is near to the large greenhouses, but still stands separately from them. A single pumpkin is growing in the glasshouse: the Rouge Vif d’Etampes, or Cinderella pumpkin. The glass panes of the glasshouse contain texts with information about the pumpkin, such as how it grows and flowers, pumpkin recipes, the origin of the genus, etc. At the end of the season the pumpkin will proliferate through the glasshouse. It is a glasshouse for a single plant, surrounded by a structure of text, like a three-dimensional picture book. (The Pumpkin glasshouse was included in the collection of Museum De Lakenhal Leiden) In 2020, the Pumpkin Greenhouse was back in the Hortus botanicus in Leiden for another season. Now in the vegetable garden of the Hortus. Two large pumpkins have been harvested from which the chef at the Hortus restaurant has cooked delicious soup.
The museum’s monumental stairwell is dominated by patterns in black and white natural stone and captures light through the large glass dome of leaded glass. An impressive space that is beautiful in itself. The dome is reminiscent of a giant birdcage. Euphony, the sound of chirping birds, makes the dome come alive and the outside world enters. Attention is focused on the spaciousness of the architecture, the work of art is around you, but not visible. Euphony is included in the collection of Museum de Lakenhal.
Temporary artwork in an old orchard. The sixty apple trees hardly produce any fruit any more; they are well past their best. Their branches are brittle and easily break off. A girl’s dress, made of transparent orange cotton, is suspended from each tree. The dresses flutter in the wind, bringing the orchard to life again.
Vedute invites artists and architects to express their ideas about space in a manuscript with a fixed size of 44 x 32 x 7 cm. In this way, Vedute builds a library of visual statements about space. The manuscript Gonepteryx cleopatra (no. 100) was made as part of a sub-project Space and Colour, to which twenty artists and architects have been invited by curator Jetteke Bolten. The work consists of a wooden drawer/butterfly cabinet, in which yellow/orange butterflies (Gonepteryx cleopatra) are pinned behind glass. The drawer is stored in a sheath. Once upon a time, butterflies flew in a free space, fluttering from flower to flower.
‘Description: male has a strikingly large orange field on the upper part of most of the forewing, missing in the female, which is light green and can be confused with the female of the Lemon Butterfly. Appearance: roadsides and lightly wooded areas. Flight period: one generation from February to August. Distribution: ‘Southern Europe from Spain to Yugoslavia.’ (source: John Feltwell, Brian Hargraves, Vlinders, Thieme, Baarn, 1993)
n of Dr Jenny residential and care complex, Dinxperloo
Client
Dinxperlo Housing Association
Year
1996-1998
Spray! is a labyrinth of around 20 metres in diameter, with water running through the centre. The structure is made of pigmented concrete. Bronze vases that spray water at set times have been placed at different spots in the labyrinth. The shape of the labyrinth is taken from the Hortorum Formae book by Vredeman de Vries dating from 1587. The vases are inspired by the first shape of a watering cans from around 1473. At that time watering cans were made of clay. They were vases with holes in the body of the structure, from which water sprayed. The vases of Spray! echo these original versions. At set times, like clockwork, the vases are pumped full of water, which then flows out through the holes, setting the water in the labyrinth in motion. After some time, the vases are empty and silence reigns again.
Rottemeren leisure authority, in collaboration with the province of Zuid-Holland
Year
1993-1996
Rottemeren is a recreational area in Zuid-Holland near to Rotterdam. In the area there is the Hoge Bergse Bos, that was formed from a number of rubbish heaps to create a leisure park: it comprises a mountain bike hill, a ski hill and a central hill made from contaminated sludge, around which a water feature has been created. The Still Waters plan was developed to complement this leisure area. The plan was originally more extensive than the feature that eventually emerged. It included a butterfly island, a marsh, five or more bridges, a fountain, a water image, a waterfall and a planting plan. The water feature was divided into five different areas, from contemplative to lively or sensual, each of which was to have its own bridge and/or image. Three bridges, the fountain, the water sculpture and the marsh were realised. The fountain and the water image are in place at two of the bridges. The idea was to introduce an element of delay, a pause in the middle of an area of sports recreation. To achieve this, a bridge was designed based on the shape of a flight of stairs, each bridge varying in type. (Incidentally, the skaters find the steps quite a challenge!) The fountain consists of seven dolls’ heads that spray water, introducing a living element; the water sculpture is a covered table of concrete and bronze, a mysterious element. Over time, the marsh has undergone an unexpected special development: the streams were excavated for canoeing, but the marsh has attracted so many birds that it is now an interesting habitat for birdwatchers. Current situation 2024: The Hoge Bergse Bos is currently fully grown and has become an intensively used recreational area. The fountain was removed in 2020 due to a defect. There is currently no budget to restore it.
The Van der Helstplein is a lively spot in the Pijp area of Amsterdam; it is a square marked and dominated by image-defining, tall plane trees. In fact, the plane trees are a sculpture in themselves. The ‘In blue’ artwork was developed based on this idea and the wish to keep the square functionally open. Between the trees is an ellipse of blue stones laid in the paving. Sunken in the paving are 21 lamps that illuminate the square at night: a simple image with a great effect, that strengthens the spatial structure of the square in a poetic way. Size of the square: 45 x 15 metres. Current situation 2024: After more than 30 years, the work of art is no longer what it was: much less visible due to more terraces, faded tiles, deterioration of tree grates, non-working lamps and poor maintenance.
The neo-Gothic Posthoorn church was built in 1860 in line with a design by P.J.H. Cuypers. It is a richly embellished building, featuring many detailed effects. The building was rescued from demolition in 1989 and on the initiative of the Posthoorn Church foundation was renovated by Van Stigt architects. Since that time it has housed several businesses. The altar section functions as a hall for concerts and other activities. There are five alcoves on the altar showing damaged frescoes. The Foundation wanted an artwork that would draw the attention away from these frescoes. Five monumental doors were therefore designed to screen the frescoes. The outside of the doors is painted ultramarine blue; the interior is red velvet. The colours are inspired by the leaded glass windows above. The doors can be closed or left slightly ajar. Small openings have been made at random places in the doors, allowing visitors to gain a view of the frescoes whenever they wish.
