Piet Hein Eek

A successful failure

We've carried out a number of major projects for Peter Geusebroek (architect) and Alliantie (developer). For each of these projects, we produced the doors or entire vestibules for the buildings. This particular project was commissioned at a very early stage, while the old building scheduled for demolition to make room for the new one was still standing. We originally planned to remove old elements from the old building and use them in the new one. The plan was to photograph the facades of the old building both before and during the demolition work, and then to integrate these pictures into the new building and place the demolished pictures in these pictures in the exact same spot where they had been located. The idea behind this was to integrate the origin of the neighbourhood with the location and to place the building in a historic context. But the photographer suffered from burnout and, to make matters worse, lost all of his files. As an alternative, we started photographing comparable facades in the neighbourhood and then photoshopped the results, which did not turn out quite as good as expected. When it then turned out that the work of art was not sufficiently integrated into the building plans, we concluded that it was, after all, only a poor substitute for the original idea, and that we needed to shelve the old plan, which had already cost fistfuls of money, in order to hatch a new plan or end the entire project. Funny enough, we ultimately came up with an idea that was far better than the original one. We covered the enormous walls, on which the photo paste-ups and old building materials were to be placed, in their entirety with old doors (partly from the containers with materials that had been preserved). The result is far more convincing than the original idea and also fits in much better with past projects we have done.

My clients asked me to restyle the lower storey of a building located on Pieter Langendijkstraat in Amsterdam. Their main concern was that passers-by and users of the building should see the styling changes to the building as an enrichment and enhancement. After much deliberation, I decided to create a personalised door and portal for each resident. Unique front doors have almost been relegated to the past by the dictates of efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the construction industry. And there is an increasing lack of individuality in construction. Fortunately, however, Amsterdam, which has a tradition of highly individual buildings, still forms an exception to this trend. There was also a high degree of similarity between this idea and the door cabinets project (see creative work), which was on-going at the time. I based the door designs on archetypal images. The following portals were created for the project: the mountain shelter corner portal, the copper basement door, the steel main gate, the ceramic portal, the 'S' door, the wooden main entrance, the Amsterdam green basement door and the ship's corner portal.

We developed a number of partitions for the Roode Steen square in Hoorn. The partitions create a separate area for the various food service establishments and function as a windbreak. Even though glaring signs (and advertising) can be displeasing in an old area of the city, they are also synonymous with the hustle and bustle of a city centre. The old part of the city, the heraldry and signs for food service establishments were all incorporated into the design. The idea behind the design was that it would give the square (and cafés) the right atmosphere in which to thrive in the old city centre.

Information about art commission in Rotterdam. This project was commissioned by the hospital and architect. The central hallway was chosen as the most suitable location for artistic expression. The hospital wanted a peaceful design that would take into account the state of mind of patients, while the architect wanted a dynamic work of art and not some stuffy panel hung on the wall. Comments were also made about the lacklustre lamps already used in the space. So I developed a design for a series of lamps that would move up and down independently of each other. This movement is not visible to the naked eye and the details on every lamp are different. Since it takes so long for a single lamp to move its way downward, you only have time to observe one lamp per visit.