In this project for a hotel with a proportionally high art content, my aim is to give residents and visitors the opportunity to enjoy 'exalted entertainment'. This is predicated on three concepts - man, space and art. I have in mind a design whose composition and function are to keep alive the memory of Charles Eyck, an inspired and many-faceted artist from the province of Limburg whom I greatly admire. The arts hotel is projected in and against a marlstone slope. Marl is the material on which this region is founded, a material used for building our houses until recently. I gradually came to found my building on marlstone, and evolved a megastructure without forgetting that everything I did and designed was premised upon suggesting meaning and potential, and much less upon fixing once and for all time.

The project fits snugly into Valkenburg's development from a primarily agricultural village slumbering at the foot of a picturesque ruin (Barbarossa's fortress) into one of the Netherlands' busiest tourist centres. The year 1885 marks Valkenburg's entry into the modern age. This was when the first steps were taken in an organized form of tourism, a phenomenon that would expand enormously after World War II. From those years on, the old town centre of Valkenburg saw considerable change, with every one of its older houses converted into a souvenir shop or a bar and the ancient, picturesque townscape transmuted into the spectacle of a modern (meaning noisy, stridently lit and anything-from-peaceful) tourist centre. The idea that our exposure to art should be rationed if it is to move us, led me to design a monumental building. Hopefully the combination of this building and the legacy of Charles Eyck will provide a cultural oasis in the lives of a great many visitors to the hotel.

Place of education: Maastricht
Tutors: Mathieu Bruls, Mathieu Derckx & Ernst Kasper
Specialization: architecture