LAND ART ENVIRONMENTS AND LANDSCAPE PROJECTS
Middelharnis Sommelsdijk and Dirksland road S47 (N215)
text Lucien den Arend (for images - click the links below)
In compliance with my views on the road in the surrounding rural
landscape, also here I felt the need to preserve the character of the
existing landscape and not adapt the structures of the bridge and its
retaining walls to the lines of the surroundings. Nor did I want to
change the surroundings to accommodate the bridge. So, I decided to
distinguish the structure of the bridge from its environment, and
organize elementary concrete planes in a perpendicular fashion. Each had
to be an autonomous form - a two dimensional rectangular plane. Only the
dimensions and thicknesses were variable - their juxtaposition had to be
intelligible. The axis of the Dirksland canal changes direction
continuously; therefore the formation had to be adjusted to the
direction of the canal and its dikes at this location. That meant that
the road, which had its own course and was not exactly perpendicular to
the axis of the retaining walls, was to cross the bridge at a slight
angle. I decided to use color as a way of distinguishing the structure
from its surroundings. I emphasized the autonomy of each of the elements
by giving it its own color as well as differentiating the symmetric
elements of the bridge to challenge the programmed way of our
interpreting that which we see.
the poplar screens
After crossing the bridge there is a large space on the right, and later
on the left also; I utilized these areas to plant rows of poplar screens
at a sharp angle to the road. The seven screens are only twenty five
meters apart, but because they are placed at the sharp angle to the
road, the actual distance one drives from one screen to the next is
eighty five meters. So the rhythm one sees differs from that which he
perceives. At the end of the stretch of highway, coming from the bridge,
the interspace between the screens is filled by a large shape. Driving
from either direction, a twenty five meter square space, bounded by
poplar trees, acts as a focal point. A small path winds through it; from
it one finds himself in a large volume, opened to the sky. As the trees
grow they at one time will form a cube (I calculate it will be around
2015)."
Lucien den Arend
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