Driessen + van Deijne were commissioned by Bakers Architecten to furnish the hallways of the Amsterdam courthouse - nicknamed ‘The Bridge’ - with a work of art that would visually and acoustically make the artery’s elongated spaces more agreeable. 

Hil Driessen and Toon van Deyne thought up sound-insulating panels mounted with digitally printed fabric. The photographic images - each panel uniquely its own - show streaks of brown, yellow, white and blue, denoting velocity, current and thrust. The suggestion of speed skillfully matches the hallway’s function of main artery. Seemingly abstract, the theme represented in the panels, ‘stratification’, derives from concrete objects out of the court’s daily hustle and bustle.

Be it the voluminous case files, the paper stacks, divided by multicolored tabs, sagging under its entire weight; Or the small pleats of the bands and gowns, allowing the fabric to either reflect or absorb the light; The alternating chiaroscuro caused by the different textures of the fabric making up the gown; And a robe on a coat hook, vaguely discernable through a frosted glass door. All these observations were meticulously copied and photographed in the designer’s studio.

Characteristics of the hallway reverberate in the shape of the panels. For the elongated white space is indented by a rhythm of recessing, supporting parts and deep-set frosted glass doors. The panels demonstrate a like division of higher and deeper set parts in alternate widths. The colors that are applied in the imaging match the walls, the bamboo parquet floor in the corridor, and the cornflower blue upholstery of the working spaces that come into sight when the adjoining doors are opened.

The panels of Driessen + van Deijne notably heighten the ‘wind-chill factor’ of the hallways and create a fine balance between practical logistics, functional sound and psychological wellbeing.

Text Miegiel Loeffen