Bunker 599
New Dutch Waterline - UNESCO monument
A seemingly indestructible bunker with monumental status is sliced open, revealing the minuscule interior of one of the New Dutch Waterline’s 700 bunkers, normally completely cut off from view. Paradoxically, after the intervention Bunker 599 became a Dutch national monument and in 2021 UNESCO World Heritage as part of the New Dutch Waterline.
Many of our interventions are about articulation of the void by taking things away. In a world filled with stuff such a ‘poetry of absence’ is crucial.
Teams of specialised craftspeople are actively involved in the making of our artworks and crucial for the quality in materialization that we strive for. For Bunker 599 these include Chris Veldhuizen and Ruud de Graaf (Dikkerboom Concrete Cutting).
Hardcore Heritage
In a radical way this intervention sheds new light on the Dutch and UNESCO policy on cultural heritage: Hardcore Heritage. Read more about this in "Frontiers of Psychology" >>>
Data
Client: Municipality Culemborg | DLG (The Dutch Service for Land and Water Management)
Artwork: RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon
Vakmanschap: Chris Veldhuizen and Ruud de Graaf (Dikkerboom Concrete Cutting)
Status: Realized, 2013
Movie: Roberto Rizzo
Location: Diefdijk 5 - Highway A2
Photography: Allard Bovenberg
Video: Roberto Rizzo
Special thanks to: Sander Booms (Municipality of Culemborg)
Quotes from reviews
BK - 100 Keyworks - Visual Art in public space - The Netherlands since 1945
Bunker 599 listed as one of 100 key artworks
Bunker 599, UNESCO World Heritage
Officially listed as an UNESCO world heritage site as part of the New Dutch Waterline.
Jury Architectural Review Award 2013 - Emerging Architecture (London, GB)
“It clearly stood out because of its simplicity, beauty and capacity to situate itself between visual art, landscape and architecture.” (Jury AR: Sir Peter Cook, Manuelle Gautrand, Eric Owen Moss, Catherine Slessor)
Metropolis Magazine NYC, New Talent issue
“The union of design and philosophy results in strangely poetic, if haunting, projects. For Bunker 599, RAAAF, together with Atelier de Lyon, cut a concrete 19th-century pillbox in half, revealing its cramped interior spaces and metaphorically reopening a closed chapter of Dutch history.”
Jury Dutch Design Award, 2011
“Exploded view” “An educational intervention of removing and adding with a great sence of poetry”
Trouw, De Verdieping (PDF)
“Net zo compromisloos experimenteren in de architectuur als Constant, wie volgt?”
More publicity
>>> Architectural Review Magazine
>>> Architectural Review Website
>>> Uncube
>>> Dezeen
>>> PopUp City
>>> Designboom
>>> Ignant
>>> Think Dutch
>>> ArchDaily
