Since the XVII Century, the Grand Tour has been an essential occasion for the European aristocracy youth to experience the culture and the extraordinary artistic heritage of its own continent. This journey could last from a few months to several years. Its final destination was usually Italy.
With this project we intend to identify ourselves with those young Europeans, yet this time carrying out the journey from South to North. We imagined the façade of this industrial building like an hypothetical page of our travel diary, obviously dedicated to The Netherlands. We decided to narrate The Netherlands starting from its points of contact with Italy, the country where we live in. Science, philosophy, art in its broader sense, sports, the relationship with the natural landscape (especially with water). These are just few of the main point of contacts that we found with the Dutch history and culture.
What remains is a vision, a big canvas that portraits with the same emphasis the genius of Erasmus and the athletic achievements of Gullit, the extraordinary architecture of Berlage and the fervor of Bruegel. Everything seems to reconcile in the last element of the perspective, the Tower of Babel, our language with the one of the Land we are narrating. Indeed, in the conception of the enormous tower there is a clear reference to the Coliseum, one of the most representative monuments of our hometown.
