Happy times up at the roadworks
Het Parool newspaper / Art & Media (13 May 2011)
by DANIËL BERTINA

In the run-up to the What Design Can Do! symposium, five designers present solutions for Amsterdam nuisances. Today, Richard van der Laken of De Designpolitie on the countless roadworks around the city.

Designer Richard van der Laken (Amstelveen, 1970) has no difficulty listing four of the many building sites, roadworks and roadblocks that he has to get past on his daily cycle to his studio. “And the irritation hasn’t diminished over the past twelve years.” In his office on Graaf Florisstraat — crammed with iMacs, posters, stickers, flyers and shelves full of design books — he talks about the solutions that De Designpolitie has come up with for this particular Amsterdam annoyance. With intriguing names like the Waiting Softener and Happy Obstructions. Van der Laken is one of the initiators of What Design Can Do!, a two-day symposium on the creative power of designers and how design can offer solutions for numerous social problems. Roadworks in the city are often an necessary evil, argues Van der Laken while he fiddles with a reluctant printer. “Nothing we can do about that, you we could try and reduce the annoyance and irritation.”

That’s how they came up with the idea for the Waiting Softeners: teams of cleaners who give cars a thorough polish from wheels to roof as they wait. Van der Laken: “Not a half-hearted scrub but a genuine and carefully co-ordinated operation, a real pit-stop. That would make all that traffic congestion of some use to motorists.” In addition, De Designpolitie proposes turning all sandy building sites and roadblocks into public city beaches outside working hours, all under the name Happy Obstructions. “Take for example that clearing where Ferdinand Bolstraat crosses Ceintuurbaan. Put out a few pick-nick tables there and turn it into a neighbourhood party! That would transform the power of all that annoyance and aggression into a playful counteroffensive to bolster a sense of community.” “Design is more than just making a pretty vase or chair,” says Van der Laken. “Design is essentially about communication, and shaping our lives and society. To me it’s also a bit like judo — in the sense that you try to turn the power of the problem into an elegant solution.” In their brainstorm session De Designpolitie drew inspiration from the anarchic approach taken by the mayor of the Colombian city of Bogotá: the philosopher and mathematician Antanas Mockus. During his period in office Mockus hired 420 clowns and mime artists to curb the severe traffic chaos in his city in a comic manner. “In fact the city council should devote a small portion of the budget for every roadworks operation for neighbourhood projects like this,” says Van der Laken.

“That would turn a building site into something other than an irritating symbol of some amorphous bureaucratic procedure. It would give policy a more social face. Our solutions are exactly like that catchphrase used by the Dutch tax authorities, but then switched around: we can’t make it easier, just nicer.”