Loren Brundrett

Holding staple rights to the trade of Scottish wool for over 250 years, the placement of a 'useful folly' within Veere’s Grote Kerk sought to reawaken the site’s rich heritage; drawing attention to - and encouraging conversations around - the impact of Veere’s water systems historically and in the modern day.

Now de-consecrated and recently renovated into an exhibition and function space, the Grote Kerk - and its adjacent cistern - were integral to the city’s development. With demands for fresh water to wash their wool, in 1551 the town built the traders a cistern; which stored the rains from the roof of the church and subsequently acted as the town’s only fresh water source until 1932.

Comprised of three distinct spaces, the folly inhabits the northern end of the main nave. A changing exhibition, a sunken table and finally a workshop space are linked together by a channel of water; which flows only when it has rained. The suspended form of the pavilion draws inspiration from the geometry of the looms used to weave the woollen fabric Veere once relied so heavily upon.

These themes were then expanded into the development of a biotextiles community - a prototype for the purpose of thriving in our flooding realms - at the Bastionstrand; echoing the form of the historic pier and repopulating the Scottish quay. 

Utilising brick and seastone, the development proposes a new industry and new typologies which - rather than fortify against rising sea levels and increasing rainfall - become permeable and instead benefit from cyclical flooding. The North Sea Commons, within which the wool trade thrived, is then reawakened as a means for sharing these new architectures; a new Hansa for this new Genesis.