The Queer Salon #4The Queer Salon #4

For this year’s edition of the Queer Salon, we chose to bring out and display material of three queer landscape designers represented in our archives: Riek Bakker, who was present at the event, Michael van Gessel, and Yves Brunier. Their work varies greatly, but those familiar with the Dutch context have very likely encountered it. Perhaps even without realising.

It should go without saying that the merit of this work is by no means dependent on the specific queer lens through which we looked at it within the context of the Queer Salon. Also, it should be noted that there is not one definitive way to look at this material regarding its queerness, or perhaps lack thereof. Rather–during the selection–we have chosen to borrow a lot from the ways these designers themselves, or others in their vicinity, have written about their work or output, and how one could find an element of queerness within it. The following notes really are just interpretations on our part.

In addition to framing these pieces within the realm of queerness, we have also tried to explore the ways in which gardens or landscapes can be archives of sorts, in and of themselves. Naturally, time plays a clear role in every garden or landscape. In various ways, the following examples reference the passing of it explicitly as well.

Considering Nieuwe Instituut sits within Museumpark, there is no other place to start, than with a selection of images made by Yves Brunier, showing his design of this very park, made in collaboration with OMA. Brunier originally intended to become an architect, but rather developed himself as a landscape designer after encouragement of Rem Koolhaas, for whom he interned. Just a few years after this initial meeting with Koolhaas, and after Yves did indeed finish his Master’s in landscape design, he started a design practice with Isabelle Auricoste. In this capacity, he collaborated with OMA to design the Museumpark. The images he made throughout his design process, stray beyond the traditional boundaries of landscape representation, and are as evocative as they are bold.

In these images, Brunier employs a range of different techniques and materials, some of which rather unconventional. This becomes especially clear when one gets the opportunity to see them up close and in person. Some of his plans for example, have a base that is printed, then photocopied, and finally coloured in. They are then overlaid with tracing paper, corrected in places with Tipp-Ex, and annotated using printed tape featuring the names of different shrubs and trees. Even presentation drawings, make use of these idiosyncratic techniques, that are perhaps not necessarily precise in a technical sense, but very clear conceptually. Presenting the various unexpectedly combined parts of the park’s design into a coherent whole, this plan visually speaks for the set of ideas it represents.

The artist impressions are especially rich visual stories, or at least enable viewers to project particular narratives on them. While I cannot necessarily attest to the meaning of this particular image, I will quickly point out the obvious inclusion of three male figures. From Brunier’s descriptions of the Museumpark–he wrote, among others, ‘this site is not a virgin’–one can understand he was well aware of the park as a well-known cruising area. One’s imagination when seeing this image, may also drift there.

Even so, the arguably more potent and less obvious element of queerness in these images, lies in the hopeful, spontaneous and seemingly haphazard ways in which they are made. Rem Koolhaas noted: ‘Yves was a man of few words. He expressed his ideas in the form of drawing and collages tossed of worldlessly. They always contained an element of violence, aggression, and unbelievable impatience.’ By the time Brunier started working on his Museumpark design, he had been diagnosed with HIV, which supposedly fed that impatience. Koolhaas again: ‘When I asked him why he worked with such vigour and fervour and passion, he told me that he didn’t want to waste time.’

‘Execution of the Museumpark only started in the autumn of 1991,’ wrote Petra Blaisse, ‘I described to Yves what happened–what I saw–as best as I could, but he felt his mind was already too far away to feel any contact with the progress of his project. He asked if I would finish it for him. I said I would, and despite all the restrictions and new problems one encounters years after a design and a budget is delivered, I can only hope that we came as near to Yves’ visions as possible. The park will be finished this year, 1993.’ Delivery of the project was about two years after Brunier had passed away. He would have been just thirty years old.

Also on display, were a number of drawings made by Michael van Gessel. Having been employed at Bureau B+B for almost two decades, seven years of which as director, Van Gessel’s career is also closely linked to that of Riek Bakker. The material we have had in our collection since 2019–and therefore the drawings that we selected–predominantly date from after he left Bureau B+B to start his own practice in 1997.

Firstly, drawings from Van Gessel’s work on Twickel, the largest private estate in the Netherlands in the east of the country. It is a great example of the many historical landscapes Michael has worked on, including–but not limited to–Castle de Haar, Het Loo Palace, and Soestdijk Palace. In his Twickel project, it is not hard to distinguish the idea of Invisible Work Van Gessel prides himself for. While seemingly more rooted in a respect for and understanding of historical landscapes, one could also argue this aspect of invisibility is a theme inherent to queerness in general, and in queer historiography in particular.

In his analytical maps of the Twickel grounds, the viewer can see how Van Gessel has layered and synthesised the various time periods and styles that can be traced in the castle’s park, and that informed his design interventions. Take special note for example of the way in which the various water bodies–such as moats and ponds–have changed over time. After identifying the essence of a complicated landscape like that of Twickel, with its traces of various time periods and styles, Van Gessel carefully intervenes through numerous interventions–big and small–to enhance some of the original ideas behind the creation of this landscape. These interventions include the removal of various shrubs, the addition of groups of trees, and significant new alterations of the aforementioned water bodies.

Many of those interventions will hardly be recognisable to the unassuming visitor. Van Gessel is not creating a new design reality, he is rather reviving the essence of old ones. Yet he is not merely recreating a previous state of the gardens either; his work is more interpretive than that. In the form of some his sketches, the picturesque moments he envisions become even more clear. He enlarges ponds, plants extra trees, builds a temple based off an original nineteenth-century Zocher design, and adds various bridges. It is in these new structures that it becomes clear contemporary interventions have in fact been done. Van Gessel’s ornamental new additions, some of them featuring elaborate floral patterns, while not completely unexpected, clearly contrast against the historical gardens in terms of both material and form. The undeniable artifice of these moments, like in so many (historical) landscape gardens, hint at a kind of camp sensibility.

The private gardens Van Gessel has designed and created, are undeniably stylish and befitting their built context. Yet they are not as rooted in a clear historical tradition, as the country estates he designed. The drawings he made of gardens in cities like Amsterdam and Dordrecht, are very particular, and display clear and distinctive graphic qualities.

In a 2007 monograph of his work, Adriaan van der Staay defines Van Gessel’s queerness mostly by the dualities in his character and interests. He finds within him, what would have traditionally been considered both masculine and feminine sensibilities. With these words in mind, one could read into the drawings of Van Gessel’s private garden designs, where the rigidity of clearly defined paths and borders are to be understood as indicative of a certain idea of masculinity, and the contrasting lush flower beds–here represented with stylised William Morris patterns–with a certain idea of femininity. These flower beds are planted in such a way, that they appear different throughout the year, as different plants bloom at different moments. Van Gessel refers to these beds as carpets, and the dimension time that is so present in his historic landscapes, exists on a different scale here. From centuries worth of ideas and change, to the progression of seasons in a year.

Michael van Gessel’s designs are fairly austere, tastefully integrated into the realities of their surroundings. It’s in his patterns, like those employed in his plan drawings, one can find a degree of whim or delight as well. Projected onto various types of structures, such as hand railings, planters, and walls, these elegant textures are almost like a signature.

Finally, we selected the three panels Bureau B+B submitted to the seminal Parc de la Villette competition of 1982. Riek Bakker en Ank Bleeker’s design was awarded first prize ex aequo, and was presented in a beautiful set of drawings. They at once represent a critical moment in the development of professional landscape architecture in general, but also a breakthrough moment for Bureau B+B as a young design studio specifically. For a more in-depth look into these panels, and to hear their history, please do watch our recorded conversation with Riek Bakker during the fourth Queer Salon. In it, she also moves beyond her work on this project, to talk about her time as director Urban Development of the city of Rotterdam, among others.

Nieuwe Instituut manages the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning and is one of the initiators of the Design and Digital Culture Archives Network. Since its establishment in 2013, the Nieuwe Instituut has been experimenting with new, discursive formats in its role as a government-funded heritage institution. In the world of architecture and design – unlike in the arts, the media and the cultural sciences – a queer and intersectional perspective remains underdeveloped. This is the ambition of the Queer Salon in collaboration with the Critical Visitor consortium.