Havva Woldendorp

As a designer, I am fascinated by freedom. How can space provide us with a sense of freedom? This feeling exists somewhere between complete freedom and restriction. Last semester, I discovered that when we think about freedom, there are two extremes. 
On the one hand, there is safe freedom: a form of freedom that lies closer to restriction and offers support, structure, and protection. On the other hand, there is reckless freedom, which seeks out the unknown, the unpredictable, and the uncontrolled. In today’s world, spatial design is often focused on safe freedom. As a result, an imbalance emerges in which reckless freedom is given little room within public space. 

This tension forms the foundation of my graduation project: a park on the Wagenwerkplaats. This former industrial site naturally carries a reckless character. In the evenings, people gather here to drink, smoke cannabis, party, and even engage in drug dealing. During the day, however, the site takes on a completely different atmosphere. It is used for walking, playing, and walking dogs. Two different worlds coexist here side by side. 

My personal history with this place reinforces that feeling. As a child, I ran across the overgrown sand mounds that felt like enormous mountains. As a teenager, I came here to break things and spent weekends with friends drinking and smoking cannabis. Now, I seek peace here during walks. This layering of experiences makes the site particularly suitable for exploring both forms of freedom through space. 

With my design, I aim to create an environment in which visitors are invited to discover their own form of freedom: through exploration, climbing, jumping, and claiming space for themselves. In doing so, users are continuously encouraged to position themselves somewhere between safe and reckless freedom—and to accept the consequences of their choices. The park consists of ten phases in which both forms of freedom gradually evolve and are increasingly placed in opposition to one another. The park is therefore not only a place to experience freedom, but also a space that confronts visitors with its limits. 

Safe freedom manifests itself through a path that encourages the visitor to step beyond their comfort zone. The first phase begins innocently: the reckless realm revolves around the desire for an unknown place, while safe freedom remains connected to overview, familiarity, and contact with the outside world. At this stage, the two forms of freedom still lie close together. 
As visitors move through the phases, the tension between people and space gradually intensifies, until the two freedoms stand directly opposite one another, with physical violence representing the ultimate confrontation. Each phase illustrates a new tension in which freedom is expressed in a different way. 
In this way, tensions emerge between control and surrender, between safety and risk. The aim is to make visitors aware of how these different forms of freedom feel, and how they navigate between them. The park not only makes freedom visible, but above all makes it physically tangible.