Hans van Houwelingen, Zuil van Lely (2002)

Aldo Rossi calls it an fatto urbano (urban artefact); a street, block, building or monument with a history of events and memories, periods of rise and fall, that are so inextricably connected with the city as a whole that they epitomise it, as it were. Lelystad has no history, and consequently no urban artefacts.

The 32-metre high column is built from blocks of basalt, the same material that was used to build the dikes and reclaim the polder, which still protects the new land from water. On top of the column, Houwelingen put a statue of Cornelis Lely (1858–1929), the engineer and politician who gave the impetus to the reclamation of the Zuider Zee. This statue was made in 1984 by Piet Semeyn Esser (b. Baarn, 1914). It was first erected in a different place in Lelystad, until it had to make way for new urban developments. However, Esser objected to the great height at which his statue was now placed, and it was taken off the column after six months. But the removal of this statue did not mean that the column would have to go, for it had not been erected to bear that specific statue. Since September 2004, a different statue of Mr Lely has been towering above the city and the polder. It is a cast of the sculpture by Mari Andriessen (1897–1979) that was erected at the head of the dam in 1954.

Sculpture with conventional and historicising features
Objects by Hans van Houwelingen always serve an idea. Van Houwelingen mostly works outside the museum, in the public space. He starts with studying and analysing the environment and then makes his work in response to it. This does not always result in a sculpture with conventional and historicising features like here in Lelystad. His works can also be a design for the environment, or they may even lack any material form altogether. In Utrecht, he laid out a ‘Persian rug’ of bricks on Amerhof square in de Rivieren district of Utrecht. The bricks were designed by the Moroccan artists Hamid Oujaha. The ‘rug’ connected two schools with the square, and also expressed a connection between different cultures. Van Houwelingen always works in and with the historical, political and social field of the environment in question.

The commission for a work of art for the centre of Lelystad was part of the urban development plan ‘Missing Link’. After forty years, it was clear that the functional modernist ideas that had lain at the basis of Lelystad did not work, and a large-scale urban renewal project was started to breathe new life into the city. The Rotterdam architects’ firm West 8 developed a master plan for the city centre. The modernist ideal was definitively rejected in Lelystad. Van Houwelingen responded to this by erecting an enormous column in the very heart of the city, bearing the statue of a person who had played a key role in the city’s history. This is the kind of landmark and familiar urban artefact that can be found in many old cities. The Zuil van Lely (2002) is built from and refers to elements from different historical periods and the development of Lelystad. The work of art marks the centre of the city and indicates that the history of the city is part of its renewal.

Annick Kleizen

1 The commission was supervised by the art advisory agency Kunst en Bedrijf.
2 Hans van Houwelingen, ‘De Zuil van Lely’, STIFF: Hans van Houwelingen vs. public art, Amsterdam 2004, p. 279.
3 E.g. see Petra Brouwer, Van stad naar stedelijkheid: planning en planconceptie van Lelystad en Almere 1959-1974 , Rotterdam 1997.

Hans van Houwelingen, Zuil van Lely
1957, Harlingen
Zuil van Lely (Lely’s Column, 2002)
Basalt, concrete
Height: 32 m
Location: Lelystad, Stadhuisplein
Municipal Collection of Lelystad

Website Hans van Houwelingen