Anna Slikker

the traces of Het Langhuis 

We live in a time when everything is speeding up and perspectives collide ever more visibly. Instead of resolving that friction, my design sets out to create space to experience it.

Het Langhuis on the Goudsteeg in Zwolle is a listed national monument in which six centuries of construction lie stacked on top of one another. The history sits everywhere in its walls: layers of plaster, bricked-up openings, cracks where two buildings meet, traces of habitation. The building already tells its story. It is just that no one listens anymore.

In this work I am the narrator of the building. Het Langhuis tells its history through the traces I bring to light. I introduce a minimal, autonomous intervention that enters into a dialogue with the existing building, its surroundings and its history. Not by dominating, but by existing alongside what is already there and making it more legible. A white layer runs right alongside the existing walls and never touches the building. Within that layer are fourteen framed openings, spread across four rooms and two floors. What the frame excludes falls away. What the frame encloses becomes visible. 

The intervention works as a metaphor for our time: a place without hard boundaries, where space opens up for slowing down, awareness and feeling. It is in that openness that emotions can be captured and truly experienced. My design is not about itself, but about the space and how we look at it.

It is an invitation not to push different paths and stories away, but to embrace them, and in doing so to discover your own position and story. I add no history. I add a way for it to be read. 

annaslikker@gmail.com 
a.slikker@student.artez.nl