Inside Space to take place. Photo by Erik Anna
Space to Take Place
Space to Take Place is a community Bench project in Amsterdam where a 100m bench has been placed in the IJburg quarter which has been build on reclaimed land. It invites you to collaborate by publishing photos of videos of the project and share it and brings us amazing photography (see their Flickr Group).
It is a project with different angles: The Bench is owned by various contacts of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs which donated parts of the Bench to these contacts from all over the World… something else than sending them an agenda with nice photos of The Netherlands.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned Droog to design an exclusive gift for its important foreign contacts. Each year the Ministry gives away 50,000 copies of Holland Agenda, a lavishly illustrated desk diary, but the need was felt for a more exclusive present suitable for the 1,000 most valued contacts of Dutch ambassadors and consuls-general across the world.
Dutch designers were asked to come up with a creative and innovative idea. A competition was thrown open to designers with whom Droog worked; it was also placed on the Droog website and publicised through the various design courses in the Netherlands.
The directors of Droog, Gijs Bakker and Renny Ramakers, selected ten finalists [pdf] from sixty entries, and their projects were then submitted to the jury. After lengthy deliberation the jury, consisting of Jan Hoekema, Nikki Gonnissen, Ed Annink and Guus Beumer, and chaired by Flip de Heer (former Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), unanimously selected the design by Claudia Linders: Space To Take Place.