Duration: 1996 - 2003
Location: Town Hall, Oud-Beijerland
Participants: 9 artists and all employees of the town hall
Visitors: people who used the town hall
Number of Events: 9

As part of the construction of the new town hall of Oud-Beijerland in 1996, Van Heeswijk was asked to contribute a public sculpture. In close collaboration with the architect Victor de Leeuw, she constructed atmosphere zones she called 'habitats', which visualise what is going on in Oud-Beijerland in order to make the users of the postmodern building feel more at home. The four habitats are 'the Polder', 'the Community', 'Collaboration' and 'Culture'.

'Polder' allowed for the creation of an inner garden that functions as a model for the current ecological management of the region, and in which the local Society for the Protection of the Hoeksewaards Landscape organizes talks and tours. An orchard - representing the historical, natural environment - was also planted outside the building, instead of the planned parking lot.
For the habitat 'Community' an 'engagement room' was built. This special room had been overlooked in the new building's design, because nowadays in the Netherlands, registrations of marriages, births and deaths are mostly processed at a town hall's central information desk. In Oud-Beijerland, however, with a strict religious community still predominant, family matters are of great importance and thus a special, private room was needed where these intersections of personal life and bureaucratic procedure could take place. 'Collaboration' consisted of a new design programme for the information desks and the canteen, emphasizing the need for employees to learn more about each other and their work activities. Finally, in 'Culture', a four-year program was established, inviting artists to contribute a work to one of the habitats and to create interventions in the building's architecture. All these habitats were incorporated in a specially designed sign-posting system. Making use of the existing budget allocated to the building process made it possible to take the project Een huis for the gemeenschap (A House for the Community) beyond the small amount of funding reserved for art, and it is still up and running today. The project was an intense process, not only working with the community to integrate an art project into their lives, but also devising an official city government structure in order to ensure it ongoing support.

related essays

A House for the Community

Nov 1995