Jurriaan van Stigt column
On the façade of a house on the Ceintuurbaan in Amsterdam, near the Nieuwe Amstelbrug, I see two gnomes playing a ball to each other. A Dutch synonym for returning favour to each other. I happen to know from my grandfather, an architect at the office of the well-known Dutch architect Cuypers, that the ornament was intended by the contractor as a wink, because he had not been selected for the building opposite: the church Sint-Willibrorduskerk. A mistake of judgment from the client, because the church has since been demolished due to the many construction errors. As a child I saw the fun in it. It is a bit childish though.
As a columnist I recently got the ball at LEVS from Adriaan Mout, after he in return received it from Marianne Loof three years ago. Together with the other partners of LEVS architects, we think about the profession and its role in society. Where Marianne explained the larger developments with a helicopter view, and Adriaan focused on the densification task for housing and urban development, I will now focus on the climate crisis and the consequences for our work. Designing and building in the Netherlands really need each other in this regard. And by that I mean: we have to help each other.