Edwin Dertien is an inventor. He asked me to help him for his coming exhibition in Oyfo , Hengelo, to build the house of the inventor, filled with many of his ideas, inventions, constructions. We’re still building, it is work in progress (January 2026)
What about using boxes and stacking these? We can make an interesting ” labyrinth” with surprises, hidden corners and so on. I developed the boxes for Diets present, but they are, like some kind of Lego or Meccano, also good for this design. And we can make the walls of transparent material (” kanalenplaat” : lexan sheet as used in roofs) so it will not be a massive, closed box but inviting instead.
The rendering looks good, but will it work?
First build. Made extra boxes and an outline of the house. Now we can change easily. This will result quickly in a useful assembly. We can change it, make pictures, discuss it easily.
Architects say they “discipline” their idea. Which means with an idea in mind the possibilities, opportunities of a layout of the building (here: the set) can be explored quickly. That is exactly what we aim to do with this 1 to 10 scale model
Jan. 9th:
Dummies of the objects in the model so we can check if we have enough space. And also wheelchairs should have access which limits the width of the paths.
Material will be 18 mm plywood. It is heavier than 9 mm but we need the stability. And building, and later, disassembly, will be easier and cheaper because we can use screws instead of connectors that require more precision and use nuts and bolts
construction of the boxes. i use a mold in the front of the box, it works quick and exact.
finishing the edges with the router
inspecting how light works in the box
Edwin Dertien checking positions of the boxes. Does it work?
Assembling the first portal. Will it bend, is it straight? It is going well, nice architectonical shapes that also have some intimacy. And strong enough to build with.
jan 31th
building proceeds. 30 blocks is a lot, so help is welcome
The old projection / TV case fits in the 60 x 60 x 60 box
How to assemble the real set? Lifting 2 connected boxes to about 3.5 m elevation should be done safely. Fortunately there is an old, but still partly functional lifting beam, right above the location. This will be very helpful.
The roof at Oyfo, Hengelo, where it will be build. That looks promising. Even two more beams to hoist the blocks. That saves a lot of work.
Edwin is already filling the first boxes with his robots and furbies
Friday Feb 8th: we’re assembling in Oyfo!
making a grid for the placement
edwin and Ruud put the blocks on their place, i do the coordination with the plans in my hand, good for a 67 year old guy🙂
a lifter, very useful and it saved us a lot of hoisting
Today, Februari 7th, is a rest day, we made good progress yesterday. Tomorrow we finish the details and Edwin can start to fill the boxes. I will make a construction plan for the “envelope” that gives an outline of the house. We did already have an idea what it should be like. But we waited until we actually had the boxes stacked so we could walk through and have a good look.
It’s getting there. We made a big decision: we skipped the house shape around the blocks. For various reasons. The most important: what would it add? Would it work? Especially in this already “noisy” visual place. We had our doubts, as it already looks good. More is less in this case. So the red pencil scratched through it. I think it was a good decision