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HOFWIJCK AND TITAN

A Project to Locate a Future Landscape by Locating its Past.

Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.

-- Simon Schama. Landscape and Memory.

Keywords

'Gedicht en buitenplaats,' immortality (language survives the death of its host), memorial, pointer, relationship of father and son, vision and invention, conversation piece, clockwork, 'this way forward,' optimism, (Chris Burden's scale model of the solar system).

Father and Son

The Father (Constantijn Huygens 1596 - 1687)

Diplomat, Secretary to the Stadhouder Frederik Hendrik (the Prince of Orange).

Founds his 'country estate' Hofwijck around 1641.

Completes his poem Hofwijck in 1651.

The Son (Christiaan Huygens 1629 - 1695)

Goes to Leiden to study law, mathematics and the natural sciences in 1645. Becomes one of the most learned men in Europe.

Develops a relationship with Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), who was known as the best microscope builder of his time. Huygens was involved at the examination of small life forms and microscopic objects like sperms and blood cells. He ground his own lenses a built very large astronomical telescopes. (His biggest refractor had a length of five meters.)

Invented the pendulum clock, discovers the rings of Saturn and its moon, Titan around 1656.

Writes 'De Ludo Aleae' in 1657. The first theory of probabilistics.

Writes 'Cosmotheria: The Discovery of Celestial Worlds' around 1690.

Cosmotheria

"We might rise from this limited Earth and, looking from above, thinking, whether nature all its splendour and glory had wasted to this heaply of dirt. So we will, like traveller in other far away lands, get a better judgement about the things at home and form judgement of any thing by its worthiness. What the world calls great we will admire less and all the nullities most of the people set their heart on we despise noble, because we will know, that myriads of settled and equally good fitted worlds like ours exist."

Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments

Three excerpts from Alan Sonfist's 1968 manifesto, 'Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments':

"Other projects can reveal the historical geology or terrain. Submerged outcroppings that still exist in the city can be exposed. Glacial rocks can be saved as monuments to a dramatic natural past. If an area has been filled in or a hill levelled out to build buildings, an indicator can be placed to create an awareness of the original terrain."

"The sun is such a remote but essential part of our life. Its continual presence can be emphasized by building monuments. Sides of buildings in prime locations can be marked with various sun shadow marks at different hours. As the angle of the sun changes during the year, buildings marked in various parts of the city can indicate the time of the year..."

"The migrations of birds and animals should be reported as public events: this information should be broadcast internationally. Re-occuring natural events can be marked by public observational celebrations: the longest day, the longest night, the day of equal day and night, the day of the lowest tide and so on, not in primitive mythical worship but with the use of technology to predict exact time..."

Literature

Huygens, Contstantijn. Hofwijck. 1641.

Hunt, John Dixon. The Country Estate Immortalized: Constantijn Huygens' Hofwijck in The Dutch Garden in the Seventeenth Century. 1990.

Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. 1995.


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