Inspired by the Dutch Design Week, I thought I would write about the various art objects dotting the Eindhoven university campus.
Tucked away next to the Zwarte Doos is what I affectionately call The Claw. It looks like…err, well, a giant metal claw. Painted in the most attractive colour that is iron rust, it looks like a remnant of a dystopic past, or a dislodged part of a Transformer Autobot. It serves no other purpose besides amusing passerby’s, providing a fancy support for locking your bike and drying your clothes, if you happen to fall in the Dommel.
Another puzzling piece is the ‘Genesis’, a sculpture on the edge of the main lawn outside the Hoofdgebouw. It’s supposed to be a symbolic representation of the growth process that students go through during their years at TU/e. Well, if that’s true, then I’m glad I’m just here for 2 years. Moreover, if you look at it from a certain angle, it seems like the statue is displaying the universal middle finger gesture. And I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s been purposely pointed towards the library. Or TU Delft.
If you cycle down the Kennispoort bridge and misjudge your braking, you’ll find yourself smack in the middle of the dysfunctional ‘SOH19’, also known as the Forgotten Dinosaur Egg Pool. You can’t miss it.
It took 5 years to convert a perfectly fine grassy lawn outside the Zwarte Doos into a marshy swamp. The idea was to use floating solar panels to collect light energy to generate a magnetic field, which in turn levitates a huge sculpture, ‘The Buddha’, in the middle of the pond.
Now, if you’ve lived in Eindhoven for a decent amount of time, you probably realized the glaring flaw in this plan. Solar energy? In Netherlands? You’ve got to be kidding me. How could anyone possibly think that sunlight could be a sustainable energy source in Holland? We don’t get enough of it to waste on levitating Buddhas. Wind energy, yes, but solar energy, no way.
Come to think of it, a giant floating windmill would be a cool piece of art instead. We could even shape it like a Buddha. The tourists would love it.