Elongated station brocklede [brok = marsh, swamp; lede = watercourse] 2025

BREUKELEN – Commissioned by the LEV (Living Environment and Imagination) network of the Province of Utrecht, I wrote the letter below to Breukelen Station on May 23, 2025.

Balancing on marshy land, where forests of alders and birches once flourished, you bravely hold the runners high in both directions. At the ends of Cees Douma’s design lie the cities of Utrecht and Amsterdam. You hospitably receive even the most insolent intercity trains that refuse to stop. On the platform, discomfort rushes past. Everything in the service of movement! Your plank ceiling looks somewhat sparse above this electric onslaught.

The waiting area around the glass frame is open and far from a dance floor. The artwork ‘De Reiziger’ (2011) lies motionless on the cold surface. Vulnerable, the travelers catch the peat wind, accompanied by persistent traffic noise. The transparent windows of the sound barriers do not escape the spray can. In the high ceiling, at the spot where you “draw people in”, skylights offer a perspective to a murky elsewhere.

A conversation lasting five years is supposed to lead to a quality boost for your austere quality. Now that it is time to act, the pursued ideal remains veiled in technical analyses, the complexity of diverse ownership, and user surveys. The artistic angle seems to have arrived here five years too late. In the meantime, the scooters have taken over your space. Their chrome gleams just before the stairs. Like steel tripping hazards in a drafty passage. This “train” will never run on schedule again.

The sense of insecurity has been picked up from your users. Something that is dark must become “light” forever. The space is divided into problems. The impulse responds to necessary future capacities with already tendered bicycle racks. The available space for art is demarcated in your dark tunnel. The sun slumbers down here, somewhat dusty, by the stairs. The graffiti was polished away in the name of the quality of your dark grey skin. Your location-specific identity seems to consist of practical solutions.

It is warmth that you lack in your concrete simplicity. This chill makes one cold and indifferent. It allows your boundaries to be crossed. Police cars set the example and drive on your bike paths like a penetrating punch in your concrete stomach. If you were to float, we would no longer be hindered by your heavy stone barrier. After all, like a raised straight line, you can see the lush green horizon everywhere beneath it – as if it still existed.

Let us strive once again for the true beauty of simplicity. Replace those skylights with a contemporary play of color. Turn your tunnel into a “projection screen.” Amplify the flickering sunlight on the waterway and reflect this light of life deep back into your dark vault. Let the rippling sound of the surging water from the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal compete with that of the highway. Offer your travelers a meaningful escape on an uplifting staircase to other levels of thought.

Take the wind away from the sails of the Kortrijk Mill again with new trees, but give it water back as a monument to our inability to see the horizon here. Reinforce this heritage with a truly alienating landscape.

Furthermore, remove everything that is superfluous. Liberate the sightlines from superficial concessions. Abandon pragmatism so that you can look from the past at where we are traveling to. Create that hospitality pavilion as a relational work of art. Eliminate Marc Augé's nonspace with a warm public square in service of special encounters.

Let this environment finally relax from its infrastructural burnout.

Edwin Stolk – visual artist

As an artist, I am involved with LEV! (Living Environment and Imagination) of the Province of Utrecht. This network contributes expertise and creativity to issues regarding spatial quality.

As an advisor, I can play a role when it comes to art in public space. I enjoy collaborating on the drafting of cultural and spatial vision documents for municipalities. If you are interested, please get in touch to discuss the possibilities.

[Photo: Edwin Stolk]