By Editor Design.nl / 08-10-2008

Space to Take Place

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently commissioned Droog to think about a special business gift for its important foreign contacts. While the gift could have been a cleverly designed object or book or piece of art, this time it had to be something more innovative. Via a national competition organised by Droog, the entry designed by Claudia Linders entitled Space to Take Place was chosen, an offering of a piece of Dutch land represented as a 100m long bench in which recipients are given a shared space, namely a reserved seat.

The bench is located on IJburg, Amsterdam on the northwestern tip of the Bert Haanstrakade, overlooking the IJmeer. Its exact coordinates are N 52º 21'41.09" / E 4º 59'32.92''. IJburg was chosen as the site in recognition of its modern Dutch architecture and as a symbol of the Dutch tradition of the reclamation of land and the country's struggle against water. The public are invited to participate in the project through submitting photographs and videos of the bench on the website, to extend the notion of the public domain and shared identity.

With the Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, and the State Secretary for European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, Space To Take Place was officially presented to the public on 6 October 2008.

'Through this symbolic gift of real estate, recipients become hosts: they invite others to occupy this place in the Netherlands – a place whose genesis is in part due to them. By indicating and occupying a place and a position, the project creates a new mode of hospitality. The added value of this project is that both the bench and the website are collective property as well as functional artistic objects in virtual and real public space.'.
Space to Take Place

Main image: Photography Droog
Image: Photography Edwin van Eis
Image: Photography Droog

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