Laurens Kolks > spatial design

Is the Campus Designed for Protest?

23 September 2025

Event

(Re)Claiming Space Event Series - Studium Generale TU Delft

Lecture and temporary installation.
Production team: Sanne Helbers and Leon Heuts.

In the TU Delft library I delivered a short lecture and created an installation that both addressed the phenomenon of guerrilla publications in public spaces. The programme also featured talks by Irene Haslinger, Ivana Ivković and Tom Twigt.

Prior to the event I designed a temporary structure made of blocks out of TU Delft Library's own modular seating system. Also, I asked presenters to submit one or more quotes related to “publicness” both in terms of accessibility and as “spaces for encounters with difference” (De Magalhães, 2010).

The quotes sent in by the presenters were:

“Public space is like a table, which both brings people together and separates them." - Hannah Arendt

“Beneath the cobblestones, the beach.” - slogan from France's May 1968 protest

“Civic space is the environment that enables people and groups to participate meaningfully in the political, economic, social and cultural life in their societies.” - EU Agency for Fundamental Rights

“Those who cannot put their thoughts on ice, shouldn’t enter into the heat of dispute.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“Well-designed public spaces teach us how to dwell in incompleteness.” - Richard Sennett

“It’s alarming how quickly misused terms can become hollow words.”

“Public debate is at the heart of every democracy.” - Martine Prange

From the above quotes - of which the authors were not disclosed during the voting session - the audience chose one that I published the same evening on a roll of paper connected to the temporarily erected structure in the TU Delft Library.

Additional information about the event can be found here.

Photographs by Virginia Tassinari