Commissioned by the city of Hoofddorp (nl)
The business park De President in Hoofddorp is based on a strict rectangular grid of polder plots and drain-age ditches. In the middle of this rigid structure is De Presidentshof, a recreation area for people who work or live nearby. In the organically shaped pond in De Presidentshof, at the heart of this centre for services, logistics, trade and industry, Jeroen Doorenweerd placed a splendid wooden boathouse with a sloop. This arched structure is based on the cross-section of a sloop, and sloop no. 5 is moored inside it. It is a place where for a moment – perhaps while eating a sandwich during their lunch break – people can take a step back from their hectic working lives and view the world from the water. The associations with sailing, the play of light on the water, the ducks, coots and swans swimming past, and the rustling of the reeds offer visitors a brief getaway between one urgent deadline and the next. Through its location, this work of art also pays tribute to craftsmanship and traditional expertise amid the often abstract business activities of our own day. The design for the sloop in the boathouse is consistent with regulations and diagrams for lifeboats from the nineteenth-century Dutch standards office, which indicate how such boats looked then. This type of sloop, called no. 5 in the nineteenth-century documents, was produced by the firm of Porsius in Workum. Porsius worked with the sloop designer and builder Piet Bouhuijs to manufacture many such boats for the shipping industry. They were the last artisans to do this type of work before the traditional wooden lifeboats were replaced with aluminium and polyester models. (Willemijn Gertsen)