10 meter high artwork for police headquarters The Hague

On the Binckhorst in The Hague, the finishing touches are being put to the Police Headquarters The Hague. That includes the 'collaboration area' on the fourth floor taking its final shape. A felt artwork by Petra Vonk has recently been hung here across a wall surface of eighty square metres: a soft, green accent between a stepped seating stair and a glass partition. We asked Petra about the story behind it.

Did you have an idea in advance of what you wanted to make?
That's not how I work, I design as I experiment. I sketch by cutting and punching into felt and paper, and weave through it with skewers. That's how I look for rhythms and patterns in the surface that connect to the lines of a building. Out of the five structures that came out of that, I then explored how they would turn out if you scaled them up.

So you were given a free hand in the design?
Largely, though at first I did start from the colour palette for the interior of the headquarters. I let go of those blues and beiges because they would have fallen flat in this spot. While experimenting, I used the green strips left over from another work that were still lying in my studio. Green tones are a pleasant colour for an office environment. In the end it became six shades: an organic sort of riot of colour that resembles a plant wall.

What fascinates you about felt?
It's a hundred per cent honest, natural material, and I think that matters. The same goes for its reusability: my works can come fully apart and everything can be reused. What's fascinating is that wool has a kind of memory, did you know that? The sheep's thread crimps, and that gives a flat piece of felt its stiffness. Felt always wants to return to that flat state. You need heat to fold it. And the thicker it is, so the more crimp there is felted in, the more wilful it behaves. I've tried out a lot of materials, most of them tore or sagged. Though felt has a limit too, as I found when I once asked too much of it on a tall work.

At the Police Headquarters The Hague you're dealing with ten metres of height, how do you solve that?
The weaving is stretched across six bamboo frames. The horizontal lines line up with the three floors in the space, which creates a subtle connection with the architecture. Although that division came partly from practical considerations to do with the size, in the end it actually strengthens the aesthetic: the transition between geometric and organic matches the division of the planes. Working with panels also means the piece is finished when it leaves the studio, so I can quietly complete it without anyone looking over my shoulder.

The wide strips and the way you've hung it create a lovely 3D effect.
The panels are set about ten to fifteen centimetres off the wall, which gives it air. The wall behind is painted light grey, an arrangement with different coloured papers showed this was the best colour. The daylight and the lamps cast fine shadows on the wall, with a lighter colour the contrast would have been too great.

Beyond rhythms and lines, does your work for the headquarters have another relationship with the architecture?
It isn't meant to become one with the architecture, if that's what you mean. It's more of a statement piece, where the transition from ordered and rhythmic on one side to natural and organic on the other gives the design tension and character. The left and right halves enter into a clear dialogue with each other and with the architecture.

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