mijN470 or simply the “most fun traffic jam of the Netherlands” will take place the 14th of July on the new to be build national road — between Delft, Zoetermeer and Rotterdam in the Province of South Holland.
The weekend before the opening for car traffic, the road will be the podium for a tailback of playful activities: the biggest street party of Holland. In line with the Dutch tradition of “Koninginnedag”, the queen mothers birthday, the people put it up themselves. Everyone who lives or works in the area served by the N470 has the opportunity to occupy a section of the N470. People are free to do what they want on their road: a street soccer tournament, a BBQ or a candlelight dinner. Different institutions, schools, clubs and individual people come together on the road — representing the dynamic and diversity of the social structures along the N470.
mijN470 interprets roads as natural public space and as an integral part of our environment. The project deals with the mental integration of infrastructure and landscape. As a new infrastructure that has no precedent in the landscape, many people do not identify with the N470. Expropriation of grounds, nuisance from construction works and the inevitable road deviations add up to a negative attitude. Consequently people have a hard time to consider it their road. The idea of mijN470 is to kick-start the mental appropriation of the road by the inhabitants and users, not through an abstract process, but through the physical take-over for one day
The organization of the “most fun traffic jam of the Netherlands” is taken care of by a team of so-called mijNers (mijn is the Dutch word for my and mijnheer an old-fashioned Dutch expression for mister).
Artgineering is an international and interdisciplinary collective, based in Rotterdam and led by Stefan Bendiks and Aglaée Degros. Artgineering devises and implements design strategies whose effects extend beyond physical. Inspired by the beauty of the banal, their work re-interprets the relation of infrastructure, landscape and the built environment. Moving between the social and cultural production of space, communication and the careful observation of contemporary territorial realities, Aglaée Degros and Stefan Bendiks have devoted themselves to both experimentation and a renewal of the tools of the discipline. In various research and design projects Artgineering has addressed the social dimensions of apparently spatial phenomena.
