Flying Pins
Eindhoven, the NetherlandsInstalled and inaugurated May 31, 2000
Eindhoven is a booming city that aspires to rival Rotterdam and Cologne as a commercial center in the European Union. It will host the World Cup games in the year 2000. This and the wish to mark the millennium prompted the city to commission what it called an "eye-catcher". On the recommendation of Jan Debbaut, the director of the Van Abbemuseum, we were selected for the task. In April 1998 we toured sites with Debbaut and Carel van Dijk, an urban planner. The theme suggested to us was the new identity of Eindhoven and its development away from that of the company town of Philips Industries, the giant electronics corporation whose buildings, now remodeled into libraries and auditoriums, occupy much of the downtown area.
The site we chose is a very active one, strongly connected to the city's future - on a median facing an intersection in front of a new skyscraper business development, the Kennedy Center - as is the boulevard that leads into the intersection, the Kennedylaan, which is the main automobile entrance to the city. On one side is the technical university, also undergoing expansion, and on the other, the buildings of the Rabobank. It is a meeting point of maximum energy.
We walked around the city making notes and taking snapshots. It took until October for our impressions to come together in an image. Taking a cue from the Dutch word "laan", we saw the approach to the intersection as a bowling lane. The image of a ball striking and scattering pins became the central metaphor to which our observations attached, for example, the perception of Eindhoven as a center surrounded by seven villages.
Pins were milled out of hard urethane foam and we took turns arranging them on a model of the site. At Coosje's suggestion, the direction of the pins changed from an explosive pattern to an accelerating horizontal movement that gave the cluster a direction and made walking under it more exciting. Her earlier decision had been to bury the ball; now two pins were buried as well, as if the entire configuration were sliding underground.
In March 1999, the model was flown to Eindhoven to be submitted to the City Council. Shortly thereafter, Coosje and I presented the project and answered questions via a closed-circuit television hookup from New York. The plan was approved and slated for installation in the following spring.
The Flying Pins were inaugurated on May 31, 2000.
Fabricated by William Kreysler and Associates, Petaluma, California.
Commissioned by Gemeente Eindhoven Dienst Maatschappelijke en Culturele Zaken and Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
