IN
RESPONSE TO a commission from the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public
and Water Management (VenW) and SKOR (Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte,
literally the ‘Foundation for Art and Public Space’, a national
organization for special art projects), Bureau Venhuizen developed a vision
for the added value that roads can represent for their surroundings and
asked three artists to visualize that added value.
pdf publication The Phenomenal Road (1.4 MB, Dutch)
www.skor.nl
With the innovation programme ‘Wegen naar de Toekomst’ (‘Roads
to the Future’), Rijkswaterstaat (the Directorate-General for Public
Works and Water Management) is turning its attention to the future of
car-driving and roadways in the Netherlands, and set itself the task of
finding out what needs to be done in order for motorways to add value
to the landscape instead of detracting from it. De fenomenale weg (‘The
Phenomenal Road’) is one component of this programme, focusing on
the perception of the roadway from its surroundings. Since a good deal
of work has already been conducted on this theme in the world of architecture,
Rijkswaterstaat chose to explore a different angle, namely art, and decided
to work in association with the SKOR. Bureau Venhuizen was commissioned
to develop the concept, and asked three artists to seek out invisible
(or unnoticed) and unexploited potentials that lie dormant in the confrontation
between motorways and the landscapes through which they pass.
Büro für Städtereisen (Boris Sieverts) organized an expeditionary
voyage around the motorway, Hans van Houwelingen developed new propaganda
to improve the image of and esteem for the motorway and Rijkswaterstaat
– its creator – and The Good Guys (Leon Giesen and Marcel
Prins) filmed the motorway from above, whereby landscape and motorway
glide past like a painting-in-motion. (On www.skor.nl you can find a complete
overview of the projects, including the film)
Paul Meurs has written an article about the potential of the motorway
as a public space that could be elaborated by, for instance, artists.
‘The confrontation of the motorways and the landscapes they pass
through presents an opportunity for designers (including artists) to explore
the qualities to be found in that location. The task consisted of formulating
and elaborating cultural concepts for the public space of the motorway.
It was not the intention to add even more objects to the landscape that
has been fragmented by speed and the massive scale. The ‘left-over’
spaces, zones subject to nuisance, motorway corridors and the rudiments
of the landscape make up a patchwork full of (as yet) missed opportunities
and hidden potentials. By establishing new links, both spatial and programmatic,
between the motorway and its context, it is possible to generate cohesion
through which the traffic corridors are given a context, place and meaning
in the (urbanized) landscape. The thrust of The Phenomenal Road is to
find, reveal and utilize the under- or unexploited potentials in projects
for the motorway landscape.’