Client: Hospital East-Limburg
Location: Genk, Belgium
Completion date: 2019
Artwork budget: $860,240
Project Team
Artist
Joost van Santen
Joost van Santen Light Art
Art Consultant
Michel Vancraybex
Overview
The integrated art extends over the entire hospital, the facades, the rooms, the square and the entrances of the parking garage.
Every hospital room has its own colored glass window. Patients, visitors and staff experience this art as beneficial and soothing. If they find the colors too much, you can slide a curtain in front of the window and thereby hide the window. However, nobody uses this possibility.
The panels of colored glass give the large building block a human scale. The celebration of color of the integrated art determine the identity of the hospital.
Goals
The client wanted integrated art in the hospital. They invited 5 artists to make designs. Joost van Santen won the competition. The dynamic aspect of the proposal with images and colors that change with time and season determined the choice for his design.
The technique of dye-sublimation to realize the colored glass panes was important. This technique makes subtle color transitions possible. In older glass techniques such as stained glass or glass appliqué, transitions between colors are always strictly limited.
The colored panels of the facade on the west side of the building block dominate the entrance square. A large glass sculpture projects colors onto the square changing with time, weather and seasons. "Never a dull moment". The art is dynamic. The specially designed colored glass benches reinforce these dynamic images.
Around the hospital is an extensive parking garage in two layers. As part of the integrated art, the stairs were made of colored glass. Each of the six stairs has its own color. The stairs add color to the terrain. They take away the gloom in the garage It also means that no further orientation indication is required. Remembering the color where one entered the garage is sufficient.
Process
The design was developed in close collaboration with the design group ‘Art’.
In the group the architect of the parking garage Michiel Cohen of Architects Cezeped in Delft Netherlands, the architects of the K-block of the Gunther Herrijgers and Wouter De Ceulaer of Architectural group A4 in Leuven Belgium, project manager and art consultant Michel Vancraybex and Ir. Philip Verheye director and project manager of the client.
Additional Information
Joost van Santen, visual artist works with light in architecture and in images. He often uses day and sunlight. Due to changes with the time of day, with the weather and with the seasons, the image becomes dynamic. The art of Joost van Santen is always more than a static image. An observer sees the artwork in one moment. To understand the project, he must know that he sees only one stage.