De Landing

How to create a public park when there is no ‘there’ there?

The project entitled ‘The Landing’ is a collaboration with Architect Raoul Bunschoten of CHORA (London) and the graphic artist Joost Grootens (Amsterdam). It was awarded first prize in a limited competition. The site is an archeological field in the centre of a large urban development in the outskirts of Arnhem called Schuytgraaf. We asked ourselves how to touch upon the deeper social, historical and cultural dynamics to create a sense of place. Still, any territories are never really a blank space. Notions of borders, past occupation and conflicts are layered on top of each other to create a dynamic that ultimately become embedded in culture. This site is no exception. Prehistoric civilization, the Romans, Medieval settlement, and more recently battles fought during the Second World War ae come to constitute the culture of this area. Faced with these issues, some questions start to emerge; how can any move be still meaningful in such context? How is it possible to generate a public space from scratch? How can a public space commemorate without running the danger of falling into complacency or simple nostalgia? Most important how can we enable dreams and expectations into a single design. For this project we combined the notion of the archeology of the earth, and those from the sky, named archeology of the sky. The former is about layers and archeology that are now buried underneath the site and that constitute its memory. The later refers to the histories of these skies which is much more recent. During the Second Word War the surroundings of Arnhem were the stage for one of the most important battles fought. The battle which became famous through the book and movie both titled a Bridge too Far, was lost and, as result the war lasted one more year. The histories of these skies tell the story of the Polish parachutists that landed here. The sequence of shapes of unfolding of the parachutes are represented as poetic objects dotted on the field. The parachutes are complemented by abstract configuration of different seized pavilions and railings which narrate the various layers of archeological histories. The ground surface is organized in a series of bands orientated along the flow of the natural flood zone of the river Rhine. They produce a striking stratification of colours and textures that is programmatically activated by use of either hard (like stone or gravel) or soft (such as sand, loam and clay).