Studio Anne Holtrop - Fort Vechten Museum

During the 19th century, the New Dutch Waterline was designed to flood large parts of the Netherlands in order to make the country inaccessible in case of assault. Fortresses were erected to defend the weakest points. The 85 km long defence line has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status and as such, it will become the largest monument in the Netherlands. A museum is built to explain the history at one of the 46 fortress sites.

In an invited competition, I obtained a plan of the museum site and worked on the present erosive state of the site, which at the beginning of the 19th century was perfectly intact. Nature had taken over and the site evolved into its current state. This gave me the idea for my proposal. For the shape of the museum, I suggested using the exact same eroded topographic contours shown on the map, built underground and within that landscape.

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