The Blue House, IJburg, A Project initiated by Jeanne van Heeswijk, 2005-09.

Case Study One - Het Blauwe Huis (The Blue House), 2005-2009, IJburg

The Blue House [is] how I see my artwork is general. The idea to create a space for the unplanned, as it is, to create this blue box and I like the analogy with the green box from Duchamp that it is both a place as well as exhibition as well as object in itself. - Jeanne van Heeswijk, 2008.

This case study examines a four-year project called The Blue House, in IJburg, initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk in 2004. Through an analysis of material gathered over a six month period, including site visits, audio interviews, and a focus group session held in May 2008, this case study takes Van Heeswijk’s self-commissioning practice as the starting point to focus on The Blue House as:

1/ a space for the unplanned within an urban renewal development
2/ as a counter-organisational model
3/ as an accumulative practice responsive to its locale and
4/ as a long-term durational process embedded in its specific place.

Facts and figures:

Commissioner/Artist: Jeanne van Heeswijk

Website: www.blauwehuis.org

Duration: 05.2005–12.2009

Location: Villa in Housing Block 35, IJburg, Amsterdam

House Owner: de Alliance Housing Corporation

Architect: Tuen Koolhaus Associates

Participants: 41 during the first year. Participants include: Sonia Boyce, Pilot Publishing, Yane Calovski, Dennis Kaspori, Hervé Paraponaris, m7red, Nicoline Koek, Silvia Russel, Marthe van Eerdt, Rudy J. Luyters, Cheilk papa Sakho, Barbara Holub, Paul Rajakovics, Orgacom, Joost Grootens, Marianne Maasland, Marga Wijman, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Marcel Möring, Inga Zimprich, Howard Chan, Tere Recarens, Carel Weeber, Wilfried Hou Je Bek, Daniela Paes Leao, Amy Plant, Ella Gibbs, Jo van der Spek, Igor Dobricic and Johan Siebers.

Visitors: 10,000 during the first year - approx. 200 per week.

Number of events: 50 during the first year

Brief Description: In 2004, Van Heeswijk arranged to take a large villa off the housing market in a newly developed district called IJburg, in the city of Amsterdam. The artist invites artists, urbanisms, architects, writers, scholars, scientists, politicians, sociologists and other thinkers to become members of ‘The Blue House Housing Association of the Mind’ for the duration of the four-year project. Associate members dedicate their time to engage with, to live and to work in The Blue House for certain periods, times and levels of intensity upon which they can decide.

Members of ‘The Blue House Housing Association of the Mind’ are encouraged to engage with one another and to with fellow IJburg residents, to consider the particularities of the location of the house and their participant role within the ‘Housing Association’.

The Blue House does not have a pre-existing set of objectives. Instead of setting out predetermined aims being established from the outset, The Blue House tries to operate as an open ‘model under development’ for diverse ways of working on location and with others. Those involved in the project are encouraged to take part in an on-going cycle of research-action, research-intervention, and observation-response as part of a durational process of accumulative practice(s) that responds to the particularities of the place of IJburg, local inhabitants and to the general conditions of urban planning.

Download Paul O'Neill's interview with Jeanne van Heeswijk.

Go to Case Study Two