How can we preserve history in our ever changing landscape? Thoughs and proposals, how to cope with the coming shrinkage (‘krimp’) in Holland.

A practical example: ‘de Noordwaard’, currently farmland. Is part of Hollands nature park ‘de Biesbosch’. This park is being redeveloped and will be given back to nature. It will be used as an overflow for the river Rhine , which means this former polder will be under water about 100 days a year. In order to make an easy flow of the water possible all the farmhouses have to go.

These farmhouses tell a lot about the history between nature and culture of this polder. This is an enormous quality of ‘de Biesbosch’ and should be preserved. In order to do this, i developed a manual to leave behind markings of this history. The goals of this manual is to let nature display the history of the Biesbosch.
A landscape with a story of what has been, is more attractive for hikers and cyclists and for the sake of the landscape itself. 

By demolishing a building according to the manual, nature will leave an interesting site which will put it’s nature in another perspective for those who visit it. 

Memories of a landscape

The current fashion in office design is flexible working spaces, which are supposed to foster contact among workers. But as anyone who commutes on public transport can confirm, stuffing people in a space is not a sufficient condition for contact. People maximize distance from others they do not know, using smartphones, headphones or books if forced to sit in close proximity. 
Traditional offices with fixed workplaces have all kinds of rituals that strengthen ties among the workers, like discussing the weekend over a Monday morning coffee. BVNW analyzed rituals in traditional offices and designed alternative rituals for offices with flexible work spaces. These interventions aim at helping people overcome their inhibition to approach strangers, turning flexible working spaces in a fertile ground for establishing connections.

Rituals for the new way of working

Today it’s less expensive to buy a new product than it is to repair it. Many products are also not or hard to recycle and re-useable.
Sometimes, however, you need furniture that you use only occasionally. For a party or a festival. With this in mind I designed several pieces of temporary furniture using the pop-up folding techniques. You can fold them flat for easy transport and storage. To use them, unfold like you do a book.

The material I used for these furniture items is Re-board. A cardboard material with similar properties as MDF, but light as a feather due to its internal sandwich construction. Made from recycled paper/wood and fully recyclable after use. It’s durable, light-weight, water resistant and eco-smart.

Folding Furniture

Illustrations

For an inspiration room at Kennisnet HQ, that wants to improve technology in classrooms, I developed (i co-operation with Studio 1:1) a wallobject that will improve the acoustics of that space. By watercutting pieces of acoustic foam and pull them out of their surface, a landscape of processors and diodes occur. People can play with the depths and hights and form their own Logicwall.

Logic Wall

The Passive Theater is a mobile theater that shows the ordinary. Or is the ordinary not as common as we thought? Through improvisation and social experiments the Passive Theater attempts to capture the ordinary and tries to rise questions for it’s visitors.

The Passive Theater could be visited at Solarweekend festival, Extrema Outdoor Netherlands and Belgium.

The Passive Theater

The Bushcraft Series is an ongoing series of products inspired by bushcraft (survival) techniques. Special because it is a modular system whose objects are assembled without screws or glue. Purely on the forces of nature.


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