'Le pays Bas' consists of a series of three-dimensional mental exercises and try-outs all related to 'useless' fascinations. These try-outs are targeted at exploring and expanding the bandwidth of my architectural idiom so as to expose the fascinations themselves. This has resulted in 40 naive experiments in which I tried to push past the limits of what is known to the point when alienation sets in.

To enable me to go beyond that border I adopted a way of working that breaks open conservative thought patterns. This took me along two paths.

First, I worked all the time on one model which I immediately constructed to presentation standards. Fashioning a model with workmanlike precision forges strong ties with it as the underlying idea is then being expressed in the greatest detail. I then resorted to crude interventions to neutralize the original charge. The deliberate deformations, comparable to Gordon Matta-Clark's 'building cuts', in turn call up new qualities. When places in a model are deliberately left open requiring a sequel at a later stage, the exact nature of that initial step makes subtle demands on the sequel. The increment must, from its personal nature, respond in the same terms as those in which the question was posed. This gives rise to a dialogue in which two entities interlock and strengthen each other fundamentally.

Second, I tried out countless art-generating processes and methods that crop up in artistic traditions of every kind. These included indifferently chosen readymades, accidental art, automatic writing, superposition and quoting.

This approach was often able to derail one's train of thought but failed to guarantee a satisfying result. It invariably took a sensitive appraisal to determine exactly where the design transcended the familiar without becoming elusive. The sensitive borderline between recognition and alienation is the leitmotif of my final-year project.

This sensitive border, and the part played by its different layers, was established not only in the model itself but also in the relationship between model, context and observer. This is expressed in the three modes of presentation.

First, the model as 'object'. The models are presented to the observer in as clinical a form as in a technical drawing.

Second, the model as 'standpoint'. A beamer projects on a wall detail photos of the various models at actual size. The beam inevitably crosses the moving observer's path, producing a shadow in the projected image. So the observer, registering as a variable-scale shadow figure, determines the scale at which he regards the image.

Lastly, the model in its 'context'. Just as a design relates to a location, here, in the context of a vacant building, I looked for places whose quality was such as to enable them to enter into dialogue with the models. By illuminating only these places and leaving the rest of the building invisible, the scaleless darkness produces an indefinable area between the scale of the building (1:1) and that of the models (1:200). The building's interior not only carries the entire series; it has itself become a model.

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Gerard van Zeijl, Jeroen Boomgaard, Ralph Brodruck