A car park has been built in what was once the old city canal in Alkmaar. Where fish and frogs once lived you can now park you car.
The garage is a transitional space, the link between the suburbs and the city centre: you leave your private space and move into the public realm.
In the architectural design of the ‘Singelgarage’ this transition is embodied by the two staircases, where the route from A to B is momentarily interrupted while waiting for or travelling in the elevater. Here two art works have been installed.
The glazed rear wall of one elevator offers a glimpse of another world where frogs swim around. As the image, which measures several metres, glides by like a film you see the frogs’ transparent webbed feet, their pink bellies, their antics and their almost human expressions and movements.
In the other stairwell a two-storey high transparency shows a dreamlike image of fishes that loom up from nowhere and appear to float in space.
Entrance: transparancy, 510×110 cm.
Elevator: photograph, 900×110 cm.
Routing and orientation
Car park: painted, 2 levels 130×2 mtr.
1998