// Identity Under Construction // (Part I – II), Stukk Design, 2017
After the De Kolenkitbuurt in Amsterdam was declared the worst neighborhood in the Netherlands, the municipality of Amsterdam has been working on the image of this neighborhood for the past 10 years. In order to get the best possible picture of the changing identity of this neighborhood, Stukk Design searched for the personal stories of the people who live and / or work here.
// Identity Under Construction // thus reflects on the changes that have been occurring in the Kolenkit neighborhood by talking to the people who directly experience and contribute to it.
Originally presented during the Onzijn exhibition, curated by Jurgen Bey, in WOW Amsterdam, Stukk Design created an installation aimed at collecting these stories over the time of the exhibition. Based on this oral material, Stukk Design worked on a new identity made of the layering of personal stories and suggestions about the neighborhood graphically returned through overlapping geometric patterns, finally collected in a publication.
The texts from this publication provoke a lot of discussion between local residents. To promote these discussions, Stukk Design developed, in collaboration with the Municipality of Amsterdam, a follow-up project by hanging wooden panels with quotes from the publication from the construction fences in the Kolenkit neighborhood. A way to make the construction site a place of collective construction as well, to bring back the attention and reflect on such visible changes, now part of the area daily landscape.
homeawayfromhome 