Grindbakken
A masterplan has been designed for the docks of Ghent. Some buildings have to disappear while concrete will be poured somewhere else, waterside dwellers will meet new neighbours and yesterday’s practices will make way for current activities.
Following this plan, a 160 meter long concrete structure, the Grindbakken – used in the past to transfer gravel and sand between ships and trucks – was about to be transformed into a multi-purpose area accessible to the public, supplied with water and electricity and painted white as an empty canvas for future activities.
When we were asked to present a first intervention in this space, we chose to interfere with this painting process. We selected and documented specific areas of interest, and 36 frames were built on-site to protect these areas during the cleaning and painting.
Since then, the Grindbakken has been progressively taken over by other interventions. The current state of the installation can be seen in the Grindbakken at the Dok Noord in Gent, a location publicly accessible 24/7.
Details
A project by
Tristan Boniver, Renaud Haerlingen, Lionel Billiet, Maarten Gielen
Taking place in a site
freshly renovated by
Sarah Melsens and Roberta Gigante
with the support of
AG SOB
Thanks to everybody who
helped for the content research
Geert De Schutter, Wouter Van Landuyt, Maurice Hoffmann, Gilbert Velghe, Michel Procès.
Special thanks to
Lieve Van Damme, Yves Deckmyn, Yves Trenson, Patrick Van De Gehuchte and their teams, Lola Bazin, Matthijs Fieuws, Daniel Van Drimmelen, Muhammed Karabelen.
