By: Studio Makkink & Bey
This line drawing of a Polderscape maps out a typical Dutch polder: a gridded topography that closely resembles its real-life rendition. Our studio’s projects, products, small pavilions, furniture and public space projects are fit inside this diagram. Each piece has its own plot of virtual land and together they form a library. The virtual database provides a basis for new concepts for social design, new strategies and well-tailored products. In each design, Studio Makkink & Bey tries to connect elements of different scales and from different origin to create new utopias. The Polderscape was made for Sotheby’s New York, to benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House.

On wall-sized illustrations of ‘The Rampless City’, massive cranes build modular skyscrapers and are themselves incorporated into buildings. Crawling at their foot are beetle-like cars that represent personal spaces in this plan. Imagine a fleet of moving rooms, places in which you can sit, sleep, keep your belongings, that can be used to transport you to a park or a church. If all corners of a defined area were within reach to every passerby in it, how would that transform the character of an urban place? How much extra time would you want to spend there? Where would the centre of public activity be, and what would it look like? Studio Makkink & Bey attempts to make projects that connect the publicly shared recollection of a place with more progressive infrastructures: e.g. bustling trading activities at a street market, or the calm of a new public space in a town’s center. In many studio proposals, spaces are created within spaces, or new structures within existing infrastructures which can rearrange things substantially. By stringing parts of a context together, the studio sets the agenda for more linkage in an existing (social) structure. Diversity is kept intact and used as a collection of opportunities. In ‘The Rampless City’, every component of a business district is incorporated in an imagined, new organization. Horizontal and vertical movements, rooftops, office chairs, construction activities, the timetable of what takes place in a business district and who enters these type of places, everything is considered useful as a component of urban planning. The window-cleaner can reach places no one get to, why not let him transport messages or packages? After adding stories to high-risers, a crane can hoist something valuable or fragile up in the air at night, so it’s isolated from the rest of the world. If pavements are rampless, it becomes possible for workers to ride around in their office chairs while working.

Utrecht Manifest NO. 4: A Working Landscape
Utrecht Manifest is a biennial for social design held in the Dutch city of Utrecht. On May 2012 it opened under the title A Working Landscape under artistic direction of Jurgen Bey and co-curated by Studio Makkink & Bey, Ester van de Wiel, Sophie Krier and Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters. The biennial for social design is is a ‘design-research project in progress’ focusing on a specific district in Utrecht with the aim to bring design processes and users closer together. The disciplines of design and architecture are in the heart of the biennial to play a guiding role in the programming of the event.

Utrecht Manifest was inserted into a neighborhood to investigate the main theme of A Working Landscape through four main projects that were headed by the co-curators. The central theme for the 4th edition of Utrecht Manifest was the potential of ‘the work landscape’ as a development model for our inner cities. In many urban areas, including the chosen area in Utrecht, industry vanishes from the urban fabric to make space for a new apartment buildings. Simultaneously, our employment market and the nature of our work, changes dramatically. These shifts have profound effects on the social structures within our communities.

But how does a city develop a framework which anticipates this new environment? How do we create an urban landscape; a landscape which is alive, knowledgeable and productive? A Working Landscape operated as an active development model in which curators programmed exhibitions, debates, a help desk, workshops and field projects to We explored the industriousness of the Rotsoord district along four lines: The EDIBLE Landscape, The NETWORKED Landscape, HELP DESK Rotsoord and The BROADER Landscape.

A taste of Rotsoord’s potential for food production was explored in Edible Landscape, by Ester van de Wiel. The Networked Landscape, by Sophie Krier, examined cross-pollinations of knowledge and skills. Clever and innovative ways of production were exhibited by Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters in the exhibition Helpdesk Rotsoord in the headquarters and workspace of A Working Landscape. Visit the virtual tour to get an impression of Utrecht Manifest, from Rotsoord beer and pesto, parades, lectures, car blessings and Drive- thru-debates, collaborations between designers, local experts, residents and businesses.

utrechtmanifest.nl/virtualtour.html