Still a little more then two weeks to go before the presentation of the tulips at Euroskills 2009. The idea is to show all aspects of the tulipproject in reality, meaning that children are painting tulip models, that students are making steel models from 2 mm sheetmaterial and that other students together with the kids that designed the tulip,s paint the heavy models. So we will present the project as it is and invite our participants to meet the possibly 40.000 Euroskills visitors from 31 countries.
For several months i have been busy upgrading my tools. I got a new Canon 5D camerasystem with sufficient lenses, tripods and relevant software. Last year I got new computer hardware and in the very near future I hope to get new Epson printers. Since the early nineties I have been working with Apple computers and digital printers. I was able to make my own presentations, in particular small editions of books and brochures.
in a couple of hours the first official presentation of the tulip project will take place. 8 primary school, 4 + 1 vocational schools and 2 higher grade vocational schools, together with many enthusiastic organsiations, are involved in the project. the presentation will take place in villa zebra in rotterdam.
since the middle of november i have been working on the tulip project, the fisherman for istanbul and the bathroom, roughly in that order, day after day. on this moment everything seems go very well. there is not much to do except to wait and see what will happen. lots of issues have been solved and for the time being patience is very important.
it is wet outside, not very cold and a little dark. for mid december the wheather is mild. i dot not like it. it is too warm, to dark, to autumn like and allthough i prefer spring and autumn wheather i would love to have now a clear blue sky and would gladly accept cold wheather. i always enjoyed the cold period at the end of februari in finland: minus 25 degrees centrograde, very dry and a perfect almost endless clear blue sky. i would not mind to get some cold days here to get at least the feeling that it is or has been winter.
we spent five days in koblenz lats week, driving to st goarshausen, boppard, cochem and bad breisig, enjoying the landscape, the fantastic autumn colors, the low sun and it sublime light and off course many different kinds of wine.
today pictures from zaltbommel to ewijk. i got pictures from the waalbridge near ewijk. nijmegen was just a bridge too far. it would have been nice when i would have been able to photograph that last part of the waterway from rotterdam to germany. the other one, from rotterdam to hoek of holland has been done.
two models, made in the mid eighties are essential in my development as an artist. these two house models are concepts of possible housing designs. one was made and intended as as an entry for an unesco design competion, the other as a contribution to a japanese competition.
it is timne top think about assmelbing the pictures i made. i have not decided yet what to do and how to select pictures from the many i made along the water and put them together in a large panorama picture. for me a collection of pictures made from many different point of vue is also a kind of panorama. it is what you might see drivinf and walking along the water. it is not a traditional panorama, made from one point, turning the camera again and again from the same place in many different directinos, later merging the pictures in one huge overall picture.
since last wek i have been able again to make pictures from the rhine and the waal. last weekend we spent in berg and dal, near nijmegen and photographed from berg and dal to rees and from emmerich to the waalbridge near nijmegen and the next day from the bridge to dodenwaard. the wheather was gorgeous: sharp autumn light, quite often hardly any clouds. because it was rather early even there were not many others on the road. making pictures was very statisfying and relaxing.
for many weeks now i have not made any pictures from the rhine or others rivers. i hae not been at the beach to continue with pictures from the coastline. the wheather has not been very inspiring. it is autumn now and with the right kind of sunlight the yellow-green-brown leaves look like they were made of gold.
unfortunately the sun is not always shining. it is not always a clear blue sky and making pictures with that kind of wheather might be a challenge for someone wanting to make nice pictures, but for me it is especially in these hectic days another good reason to stay home.
at the end of the ieghties and beginning of then n ineties i, or rather we worked on architecturalcompetitions. after a period in which i made models of possibly functional houses, i felt it was to time to work with others. i was afraid that otherwise i would repeat myself and continue to work in the same way.
with different grouthe idea in each group was to promotoe a maximum of creativittranslated in a design that could be built. many models were built, many scetsches were made and each time the results were indeed different.
houses played and still an important role in my work. i rebuilt several hosues and still am rebuilding opur present house. a house is normally considered as a place to live, as a place to be, to invest money in, to design or to sell. the houses is have in mind deal with different issues, in particular with the ideas on which designs for, shall we say, functional houses are desigend and built.
so far i have been able to realise a number of, shall we say, unfunctional houses. i know the word is not good, but here in this context it is necessary to differentiate from the functional houses. in the future i hope to realise some others as well. the ideas for the unfunctional houses are from the end of the eightis and beginning of the nineties. now and then new ideas pop up.
the transparent dream project in turku, finland, 1996, the fisherman project in rotterdam, the netherlands, 2006 and the so far not yet realized 4 chairs and 1 table, initiated in antwerpen, belgium, are important projects in my work. in a period of almost ten years 2 out of 3 project were realized. the projects refer to basic issues in humand life: a place to live, a chance to make a living and a place to meet others.
all three projects are more or less wireframes, a term-concept from 3d drawing programs. wireframes are more or less invisble and become visible by rendering, by applying textures, light, and circumstances. the wireframe is more or less the idea, visible in 3-d, but only in thin lines.
since my studies at delft university my work proceeded along the same path of curiosity. i have been deverloping ideas starting with a little tab;le and now working a.o. on a proposal for a table and 4 chairs, 70 meters high, meant for berlin.
is it art, is it design, is it architecture? does it matter? is not it a matter of what kind of frame of reference you choose, of what you want to see and hear and think instead looking open minded at my work?
i do not like the idea of virtual architecture. i do not understand architects who wite and therefore claim to be architects. i want to see it, feel it, smell it and be able to walk through, sit there, eat there, sleep there and enjoy the spatial qualities. that is a matter of full scale work, of allowing others to see the work with all their senses and in that sense be able to use all their senses. i want touse my senses, all of them, not only my mind or my eyes. architecture can be so much more then just a building, just something that fits in a conceptual frame of mind, something that the cleint wanted.
i guess it was churchill who said that the first that is killed in a war is the strategy. for me that is the same allthough i am not talking about war but about being an artist. i am not an architect because architects seem to have to limit themselves to functional "buildings" and "functional". as an artist i do not want to suffer from those limitations.
my first project was a little table, consisting of a triangular piece of steel, a rectangular piece of plywood and a circular glassplate: a small table, large enoug for a glass of wine or a mobile phone, too small for an old fashioned telephone. I designed the table, made it (with the help of others) and was even able to sell about 25 ot them to furnituredesign stores and furniture collectors.
I made more pieces of furniture, chairs, tables, shelves and some lamps and partcipated in a number of furniture design shows. for me the furniture, i made, is an important step in my work. it allowed me to train myseld to work as independent as possible from others. of coruse others were involved but in general i could make the final decisions, i could tell others what to do and why. most of all i could try out my thoughts, transform these in models this was enough to start a dialogue.
most of my work is building oriented, architecture oriented, allthough i graduated as a building engineer and urban planner, enough to get a license as an architect here in the netherlands. during my studies it seemed urban design hardly existed. i graduated on a studies comparing different lay-out in the same area and the wellbeing of the inhabitants of those parts of that area.
after my studies in the netherlands i moved to finland to another university environment. my activities there were again rather science oriented and hardly involved any artistic issues. i rebuilt some old citroen 2cv' s and designed my own furniture, which was published and even sold.
at the end of the eigthies and beginning of the nineties i visited san fransisco and los angeles frequently. i saw a lot, i learnt a lot and i still enjoy what i was able to do there. it took time to develop and test ideas, to get projects realised and earn the confindence of many others to be bale to extend the scope of my work.
in the new performance gallery in san fransisco i attended a lecture by ann halprin, had a chance to talk to her and was influenced by her ideas. she told about her experiences attending an indian ceremony, where young members have to work very hard to secure the future of their tribe, each spring. young male members were connected by a ropes from the top of a tree to wooden pins in their breast muscles. by dancing they had to tighten the rope and pull as hard as they could, to break the top out of the tree. i had heard the story one day before ann halprins presentation from a good friend who had had the chance to attend a similar ceremony recently.
Sunda, today, a day off, a whole day to cook, read, drink wine and read vogue. Homemade pasta, tuna with marsala and a nice rioja. making bread went well today, yesterday and the day before yesterday. The whole grain bread wasd good. The French baguettes, made for the first time, were a nice experiment, tasted almost like baguettes, but looked like something else.
just photographed some days ago two areas, the waterside in and near the odl once important city of dordrecht and the area between papendrecht and gorinchem. i liked the waterfronts in dordrecht and sliedrecht and disliled the area between dordrecht city center and the biesbosch, once asfar i coudl see a shipping area and now a kind of no go area full of fear for the future plans of urban designer and project developmentfirms.
the danceparade was good, nice music, nice people and good whetaher. the streets are clean again and it looks like there was no parade yesterday. time to make coffee, time to make orangejuice. andafter that to clean the garden, make some gordon ramsay recipes and continue work on the projects.
istanbul and the tulips proceed well, but the lust and desire to work on the berlin project grows and intensifies everyday. only 24 hours a day is not enough, but reasonable, others have the same. anyhow the thinking continues, mainlt about how to draw a huge project like this: 70 meters high, 100 x 100 meters wide, deep.
i knowh ow to draw with vectorworks but not yet how to get a well organised drawing. anyhow time for coffee and organejuice, time to think more about the ways to draw such a huge table and four chairs.
since this spring a blackbird built a nest against our kitchen window. each time i saw a tail, or osmething black that sat motionless againtst the glasspane. during some moments you coudl get glimpse from the nest and its contents.
several timesyou could see the eggs, first one and some hours later another one, up to four. later you could even see that there were little fast growing birds. now for the third time this years there where four eggs. i checked the nest several times aday in the last months. today i checked again this morning. when i checked again, the bird was gone and there were no egss left. i do not know what happened, but feel sad.
the work on the projects started full speed again, sending emails, making phonecalls, meeting people and working on new brochures.the projects are differen, the work is the same. this time there is nothing new about the projects, no new ideas, no new input, just the same old story. that makes it a little boring but at the same time it offers many chances to fine tune the way i am working, to use experiences from earlier projects and to concentrate more on the work itself.
we just returned from a trip to northern germany, partly holiday, partly making pictures for the big project. for many years we sailed from lübeck or travemünde to helsinki and vice versa and never had a chance to vist the area between those two cities and the polish border. we saw a lot. i made many pictures. the skies were dark and often black and the food was almost everyday traditional german. in general the trip was ok.
today i looked again at my pictures, put everything in order and made back ups. besides that we watched the formula 1 race and cleaned the kitchen. tomorrow work starts again. holiday is over.
it is still quiet as many others are on vacation, but the owrk on the istabnul project and the tulips will start full speed tomorrow again.
hopefully the weather is ok the coming days. we planned to make pictures along the german coast from poland to the netherlands and dry weather without thiunder would be very welcome. the german coast is not so long. with stays near strahlsund, wismar and plön we should able to visit many places and cover most of that coast.
according to the travelguides and pictures on the www there is a lot to see, a.o. from the hanze periodincluding some unesco monuments. recently there were pictures from large farmhouses in lutuania. it is interesting to see that slowly the area between finland and the netherlands gets more visible and becomes more part of the scenery in europe. in that sense we are very interested in a car trip along the coast from germany to talling or even st petersburg.
originally i had in mind to spend this week working on the house to continue with the bathroom, to get rid all kinds of things, especially old book and wastematerial from the old bathroom. but that did not work. it has been a normal very active working week, with lots of meetings and lots of emails.
yesterday i have been scetching for the first time since long. it felt great to have a pencil in my hand and normal paper and no computersounds like the active harddisk or the fan from the cooling. i enjoyed dawing since primaryschool.
no pictures today, just emails and some meetings. in fact nothing special. fried porc meat, rucola and slowly cooked-fried potatoes in goes fat for dinner, with french cider to drink. the wheatehr is not very special: dark, sometimes wet and not inspiring.
i have been checking several digital photography websites for news about new cameras with large sensors, but os far nothing of interest. olympus has some new camera' s that look promising but the sensors are very small, allthough 10 mb. the camera' s look interesting because of their size and weight.
but somehow i prefer something heavier, something with a 24 x 36 mm sensor and lots of pixels, so i can use wide angle objectives as wide angle objectives. but i doubt about getting a 4x5 camera with possibly a betterlight digital back or a smaller camera, or even a very small one like the olympus' s.
i even have been consideirng getting an out of production contax 645. i have not decided yet and watch the news everyday.
working on large projects like the tulips and the fisherman for istanbul is sometimes hectic and sometimes slow. as an artist you have to be very flexible. in such periods it is good to make pictures from the coast. it keeps you busy, it does not hurt the other projects and it allows your brains to do their work and concentrate on that what is essential
most of my my projects are based on thoughts about what to do, how to do it and with whom for what reasons. on a day like this, patiently waiting to see how things develop, a drive to the beach is a nice interruption fro mthe dialy sessions at the phone and the computer
thinking about the project last night, which i often do at the end of the end or in the early morning when i cannot sleep and my brains are active, i realised that the project is not about finding the end of the road: it is about finding roads that go on andf on and on. i try to find out how to continue.
how to go on: i search for ongoing roads, roads that offer new possiblities, new challenges, new views and new possiblities. that is just a matter of try and error. just by driving again and again on new roads and seeing how far i can get, i get clear which roads go on and which don' t.
each time i drive to the coast to see where the road ends, i find new roads. i make my pictures and follow the new roads to see where these end and doing so i see new roads again. the proces is similar to the projects i realize.
by continuing the search more and more people get involded: some will be helpful, some won' t. but that is life. everyone has his or her reasons to do someting or something else.
by combining thosee efforts it is possible to get a project realized. in that sense driving to the end of the road again and again is not is much about th water, but more about life itself. it is about continous learning about learning by doing and about seeing how far you can get.
about a year ago i changed my canon g5 camera with a number of raynox lenses for a sony dcs-r1, not wanting to spend too much and knowing that new camera' s would soon be available with larger sensors and more pixels. i found out that the real size of the sensor determines the real "angle" of the wide angle lens.
in general the sony camera is ok but the viewer is not always very clear. besides that the camera is slow, especially making a series of pictures and the camera is not so small and not very light. it is always clear that you are carrying a camera and very often i woudl rather have a camera that is less visible.
i would love to have a small camera with a good 12, 15 and 18 mm mm lens, something like a voigtländer bessa: a good camera for a decent price and with a large sensor so that the wide angle lenses can be used to their full potential. i also would like to have a sensor of 16 mb or if possible a little more: something like the epson r-d1s but then in a modern version.
this morning i made pictures between the "slufterdam" and the entree of the "nieuwe waterweg". the wheather was changing rapidly, it was dark, light, sunny, rainy, sometimes grey, sometimes, black and sometimes clear. as usual i drove to the end of the road, parked the car, got out, walked until i coud see the water and made some pictures.
slowly my collection of pictures, made at the end of the roads, grows. i have parts of the dutch coast, the french, the german and the finnish. the coming days and weeks i will concentrate on those areas along the dutch coast where i have not been yet.
tomorrow it is midsummer, which means the longest day in the year. i spent many midsummers in finland or other nordic countries and ejoyed, especially in the north, the feeling of almost continuous time and energy. the sun did not go down, the terrasses were open until early in the morning and it seemed everyone could live longer. anyhow it seems like that because after enjoying the almost endless midsummer days you suddenly run out of energy and your biological clock needed a break.
in winter i enjoyed the very short days in the north, with very low temperaturs and the endless snow. without snow it was gloomy and dark and the knowledge w that your stay was not permanent, kept you going. it seemed live slowed down before xmas and started again after the longest night, reaching full speed around midsummer.
today i made pictures from the sea in ter heide, monster and kijkduin. narrow beaches, dark skies and very few visitors. in hoek of holland and 's gravenzande parking was expensive and complicated. the beaches we saw, me and a., were not very special. kijkduin was nice and, possibly because of the shoppnig center, had kind of special atmosphere.
the french fries and the fanta were a welcome meal at this rather dark and stormy afternoon. for a. it was the first time to be on the beach again after having many years a summer cottage in hook of holland. a visit to the beach in stormy wheather is something special, which you just have to experience to know what it is like.
once r and and i went to the beach in hook of holland, i guss on new years eve, when it was very foggy. it was great to walk on the beach, hand in hand not seeing where we walked but just feeling our way in the fog and the darkness. the walk on the beach was great, the drive back to rotterdam by car was another pseical experience not always being able to see where the road went.
we just returned from a trip to the northern provinces of the netherlands: groningen and friesland, making pictures, between delfzijl and the beginning of the afsluitdijk, driving as close to the sea as we could. the idea was to drive to the end of the road and make pictures of that what you can see there, in this case behind the dikes. no special pictures, just pictures to show others what you see there.
the idea was to see as many places as we could, driving on public roads, getting out of the car, walking up the staircases or roads and look what we saw there, all along the seacoast. quite often there were others dikes, or fences, or private areas, or the roads just stopped. in that case we had to try other roads. our maps were not always reliable but more or less we managed to visit a number of places and get pictures from the views behind the dikes.
last weeks have been busy, working on the fishermanproject, the new project, the bathroom and the big trip. work on the bathroom slowly proceeds very well. most of it i do myself, giving me time to look, think and correct.
building with plywood and screws is easy. but it is just as easy to take things apart and try again. finally when the shape of the bathroom space is ok, it is time to put the plasterboard on the plywood and close all the gaps. after long discussions with other architects and artists the decision was made to plaster the walls with a mixture of "fix and finish" and several kinds of artist' s paint: red, gold and mostly black.
finally the big trip is under way. i started to make pictures already some time ago from the main waters in rotterdam and from those connecting rotterdam to the rest of the world. i have to do it, partly as a new project but mostly to give my head time to relax, to take some distance from the main project i am working on, the tulips with the windmill and the big frame. in rotterdam the water has two directions: germany and sea. comnig at the sea you can go north or south. that is it.
so far i fotographed the waters in the area between rotterdam and the sea. i made pictures from places where i could easily come by car, where i could park my car and walk to the water. with google earth and maps i looked where i coudl go and by try and error i found my way. sometimes i made pictures during one afternoon or morning in one week, sometiems i had a chance to go for more hours. in general i made as much as the memory card in my camera could hold.
the work on the frame, the windmill and th tulips proceeds well. many want to participate and help with the project. on this moment we are dreaming about the involvement of 200 primary schools and 30 professional schools and a similar number of supporting companies.
time will learn what we can do, but without dreams we do not get anywhere. fortunately others can dream as well and see possibilities i could not dream of. slowly the group "dreamers" grow and that makes things much easier. all my projects are based on enthusiasm. when there is enthusiasm there are possibilities. the fisherman has been realized without budget, without money.
with a budget and or money the fisherman would noit have been realized. the project shows clearly what enthusiasm can do. that is what it was about: no money, no power, no big names, just pure enthusiasm/ in present society that alone can do much
old memories keep coming back. some regularly, others now and then. the market and what happened there returns regularly. the construction of the modern housing areas and the transformation of farmland into empty sandplains is another.
also my montessori kindergarten comes to mind, where food was prepared during lunchtime for those who needed it: food that was transported by trucks. memories from trips to germany at the end of the fifties and the enormous devastations.
regularly i try to understand my work. i mean i try to get clear for my self what the lines in my work are and have been and why i am doing what i am doing. quite often i compared my work to something like peeling an onion: layer by layer taken the outside skin away and finding new layers, knowing that however many layers you take ayway you always find new ones getting more and more difficult to remove.
drawing with a pencil is easy. the more you draw the more fun it is. i am working with a 3d drawing program: vectorsworks which i am able to work with. i am not an expert but in general i know how the program works and what i should do and can do.
thw whole day i have been working on my proposal for berlin, besides doing the regular other work and working on the bathroom. it is fun to design a table made of scaffold material: tubes 6 meter long and 6 centimeters in diameter. it is a different kind of work knowing that the tablle and the chairs will be huge.
we made it: we went to berlin again. after considering all kinds of options we decided to go to berlin again. of course we stayed in the same hotel where we always stay, near alexanderplatz with the car safely parked in the inner courtyard.
as usual we park our car as soon as we arrive and for the rest of the time in berlin frequently use the extensive public transport system, even late at night. late friday night even looked like late friday night in finland with lots of happy and almost drunk people, having fun and having a good time
in 1998 i presented my ideas for a huge table and 4 chairs in the city center of berlin for the first time. i did so in the goethe institute in rotterdam. since that time i have been continously working on the ideas, hardly having time, allthough i visited berlin very often in that period but also before.
part of us tells us to go to berlin, part of us to go to france. berlin means citylife, books, shops, fashion, food and friends. france mens nature, ocean, storm, water but also fresh fish, wines and other pleasant things. we do not know yet what to do where to go.
growing up in new areas of rotterdam and spending part of the week in old areas i learnt from an early age the differences between housing areas that were plannend as much as possible and areas were urban planning was much less stringent. later, studying urban planning and getting involved in experimental housing projects it became more and more clear how restricted urban planning was, how much urban life was forbidden or made impossible and how much city life would suffer.
the last days i have been working on the extension of the content of the website. i selected another 11 projects for presentation. especially the older ones are important as they form the basis on which my present projects rest.
i started studying urban planning, got interested in building standards and procedures, moved to alternative energy and public particpation and slowly discovered the limitations of architecture and the way to go on.
i am dreaming of a trip to france. to see the ocean, to see dunkerque, le havre and st malo. i have been there before long ago and have good memories. i want to see the water, the fisherman villages and the coastside. i want to eat decent fresh seafood and learn new kinds of good. for a number of years we travelled often to germany, to berlin and drove along the rhine and the main
no meetings today, no obligations, just time to reflect on what happened and what should happen. all my projects are based no simple and easy to understand ideas and on complex stories behind those ideas. my ideas come forth of my background, my culture and my way of looking at the world and my interpretation.
sometimes reading books about artists or their work ik wonder how much work they had to do before their work could be realised. i remember that robert irwin once did an installation in a very well known new york museum, on his own initiative and without mentoning doing so. some recognized his work, others did not. i like that kind of work where you do something without mentioning your name or without telling everyone that you did it.
just work, yesterday, today and tomorrow. not much time to build. lots of telephone calls, emails and related issues. which means thinking, concentrating and sometimes doing. most of the work for the realisation of the fisherman and other projects is thinking about what to do, when and with whom.
time goes fast. it is almost februari and outside it is warm again. for a couple of days it was a little cold and it looked likethere was a little snow. it is dark and glommy and we cn hear blackbirds singeing. there was a picture in the nwspaper today about a young blackbird that was found and being fed to keep it alive.
slowly the fisherman projects comes to an end. i made today the last brochure of a series of 3, which shows how the fisherman was made fro mthe beginning to the end. later htis year we intend tomake a stainless steel nameplate with the names of all those who were involed in the project. unfortunetely it is diffuclt to get all the names.
today' s maps are very precise and gps makes any kind of orientation almost flawless. it is amazing how much you find on the internet nowadays and how precies everything quite often is: i mean the kidn of house you are living in, the cars in front of the house, the people walknig on the strete. and at the same time the maps are boring, very boring.
after a busy week lots of things are settled. no writing today and no cooking, just some fried eggs.
and for the rest some rioja wine, white chocolate and peanuts. maybe some tv and sauna today.
for the rest of the time some building and work on the house. i have to get my head clear again and keep track of what is going on. the tulip project goes fast, sometimes too fast, which is nice and scary.
time to start drawing again. i loved drawing and drew a lot. my drawings were even part of a group show in the boymans museum when i was 11. i had no idea at that time that i would ever become an artist and architect. there were no artists or architects in my family as far as i knew.