Vito Acconci & Studio, 'Parc in the Water', 1997

Location: Laakhaven/Hollands Spoor, at The Hague University of Applied Sciences

Acconci's proposal for the area around Laakhaven/Hollands Spoor was an informal idea for a mega plan for which he had already made a model that was shown at his exhibition of Models for Public Art in 1993 in The Hague. Hans van Beek, the architect responsible for the development of the area, was so impressed when he saw the plan that he asked Acconci to reduce the scale to workable proportions. And he offered him the assistance of his own architectural office, Atelier PRO.

In the proposal that Vito Acconci & Studio (Luis Vera, Jenny Shrider, Charles Doherty) developed, in close collaboration with the architectural offices of Atelier PRO, it appears as though a piece of land in the shape of a quarter of a circle with a radius of about 40 meters has slid out and tilted off the land. Everything on the piece of land that has broken off is taken with it, trees, street lamps and ground cover. The existing geometric pattern of planting has been disrupted with the result that trees in planters filled with soil have fallen into the water, leaving their negative forms on the quay that can be used as seating. Despite the fact that Acconci is now working in the architectonic realm, aspects from his early work can still be found, such as intimacy in relation to the public realm and the personal versus the public.

Click here to watch the short docu film Oasis (2024) by Shaah Kamuruko on this iconic artwork.