Strook door Nederland | The STRIP | 1979

Kas Oosterhuis | Strook door Nederland | TU Delft graduation project|1979

The Shape of the Law.

The STRIP is about the shape of the Law. When the National Parliament passes a law, that law typically has the shape of The Netherlands. The STRIP encourages the politicians to think about the shape of their proposals. Many acts would be better off if they were shaped like the STRIP.

First Act of the STRIP: “All new building activities will take place within the boundaries of the STRIP”. The remaining part of Holland travels back in time: restoration, demolition, retro-processing. The STRIP will be the road ahead. Each new inhabitant of The Netherlands gets the birth-right of 100m2 of land within the STRIP. The STRIP being 5x200km2 can host all 15 million inhabitants [population in 1979]. When the number of inhabitants will exceed 15 million people, the STRIP just stretches out. Each allotment in the STRIP can be seen as an individual pixel in a digital painting. When somebody dies, somewhere else a baby is born at that same time. This baby gets that particular allotment. The inhabitants of the STRIP have to find new and probably intriguing ways of communicating, since there is no planned infrastructure.

Second Act of the STRIP [in the case that the First Act does not pass Congress and Senate]: “All existing planning rules and building regulations will be abolished”. The STRIP will slowly change its appearance ·Driving the Dutch highways passing the STRIP will give the sensation of crossing a border with an exotic country. And 5 kilometers and 2,5 minutes later there is the reverse sensation of coming home again. The STRIP is intentionally placed cross-grained to the major national highways and rivers. This maximizes the impact of the law shaped to a rectangular sword of Damocles, hovering as a beneficial threat over the country, casting its shadow ahead.

The STRIP is a cross-connector, interlacing rivers, highways, cities, land, polders, islands, sea and people