Groningen

Clearing Groningen NL

In 1990 the municipality of Groningen commissioned Lucien den Arend to make a proposal for a landscape project on the contours of the urban space, which project like peninsulas into the landscape. The Groningen landscape consists of vast farmlands and has a flat polder landscape. In this area large stretches of forest were to be planted.

The sculptor proposed using the forest to create an environmental project bringing back to memory the fashion in which the wooded land used to be cleared in the past centuries. In this way den Arend uses architectural shapes which echo the urban public space - the sides of the entrance path are to be formed by two rows of oak trees, their foliage regularly cut to a flat plane to evoke the feeling of the urban environment between the facades of buildings. The trunks would resemble a colonnade like in the architecture of classical urban environments.

The flat foliage will be much like the row of trees that flanked the Grand Terrace of le Nôtre's palace gardens in Saint Germain en Laye in France.

At the end of the kilometer long path there is a clearing - with the colonnade continuing along its perimeter. The form of this urban-like square is the same as that of the inner spaces of monumental classical architecture.

After the exhibition exemplary projects in 1990 in Groningen, in which clearing was presented, the city waits for the realization possibilities.
 

clearing - drawing 100x70cm - 1990|1991 oak trees (quercus) and various other species - 100x100m - the entrance  path is 1 Km long by 11.33m wide - Park Noorddijk Groningen NL

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