The Elastic Perspective
Type: Folly Location: Carnisselande Client: Municipality Barendrecht Team: Marijn Schenk, Bart Reuser, Michel Schreinemachers with Joost Lemmens, Marieke Spits, Anne Ricard, Agata Piet Material: steel Construction: ABT adviesbureau voor Bouwtechniek Start building: june 2011 Completion: december 2011 Status: Final design
2009-03-18 Impossible stair for Carnisselande
The design consists of a circular stair which leads the visitor up to a height that allows an unhindered view of the horizon. The path makes a continuous movement and thereby draws on the context of the heavy infrastructural surroundings of ring road and tram track. While a tram stop presents the end or the start of a journey, the route of the stairway is endless.
The continuity and endlessness have a double meaning, however. Because the stair is based on the principal of the Moebius ring, is has only one surface and can only exist as a three-dimensional object. Upside becomes underside becomes upside. The suggestion of a continuous route is therefore, in the end, an impossibility: Far away, so close.
Because of its structure the shape of the object is hard to perceive; every perspective generates a new image with which the design is not only a contextual but also a very literal answer to the given context of the local art plan: an Elastic Perspective.