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CITIES - sculptures and land art
Groningen
Clearing Groningen NL
In 1990 the city 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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