Hundreds of stacked, weathered steel tubes form this arched monument in Laagraven Park, Utrecht, designed by architecture and art studio Gijs Van Vaerenbergh.
The Waterline Monument was created to celebrate the New Dutch Waterline being awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2021.
The Waterline Monument is a steel tubed monument that was designed by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh
Operational from 1815 to 1940, the New Dutch Waterline was a defensive system of canals, forts and bunkers that enabled areas of land to be strategically flooded in order to make them inaccessible in the event of an invasion.
Stretching from Muiden, outside Amsterdam, down to what is now the Biesbosch National park near Rotterdam, the area has since become a popular route for cycling and hiking, with many of its forts, bunkers and locks still intact. The installation was constructed using hundreds of weathered steel tubes
Gijs Van Vaerenbergh saw these historic structures as being crucial to the "collective memory" of the area. For the design of the monument, the studio abstracted the form of one of the many locks along the route using a welded stack of metal tubes.
"By presenting the lock in its essential form, that is, three arched openings at right angles to the viewing direction, the image is shifted from that of a lock to that of an (entrance) gate," said the studio.
"As the sculpture is situated on top of the slope, it is also reminiscent of a triumphal arch. The play wi...