English summary

The Ground of Things — Mechelen

De Grond der Dingen (“The Ground of Things”) is a city project by ARSENAAL/LAZARUS and Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen, Belgium. Between 2017 and 2019 the project collected 206 proposals from citizens of Mechelen — each got one square metre to make the city more liveable.

The Neverending Park

From 6 December 2019 to 13 September 2020 the proposals were on display in a temporary exhibition, The Neverending Park, designed by Jozef Wouters and Vesara Molla as an artificial biotope beneath Museum Hof van Busleyden. Eighty scale models by Benjamin Verdonck represented the citizens’ concrete proposals.

Clusters & next phase

Rather than pitting the proposals against each other as if it were a competition, the project brought related ideas together into clusters. During the Closing Negotiation on 12 and 13 September 2020, learnings were formulated and advice was handed over to the city government. The City of Mechelen has committed 20,000 m² of land in 2021 to realise a selection of these ideas.

Ultima 2019

De Grond der Dingen received the Ultima, the culture prize of the Flemish Community, in the category Local Cultural Policy, in 2019.