Sportdomes Zaandam

Willem van der Sluis (1972), the founder of Customr, was commissioned by the Office of the Chief Government Architect to design a demountable and moveable sports and recreation facility for illegal immigrants at the detention centre in Zaandam. Asylum seekers who have been denied residence are held here awaiting deportation.

Van der Sluis based his design on a dome construction to which he added an abstract decorative pattern of holes through which the users can see outside without being recognised. The dense honeycomb pattern at the base becomes more transparent towards the top of the domes. The filtered daylight resembles light passing through foliage. Remarkably this construction has a cost price equivalent to that of a conventional walled cage.

Between the lines demarcating the sports fields, arrows signify the points of the compass. This is one of the few points of orientation for the detainees. This detail demonstrates that Van der Sluis understands the opposing interests of the client (justice) and the user, but has taken up the challenge of prioritising the detainees’ interests as much as possible.

Van der Sluis’s use of the dome refers to the history of prison architecture and in particular the principle of the panopticon devised in 1791 by the British philosopher and lawyer Jeremy Bentham. Whereas the panopticon enabled the warders to view all prisoners from a single point, here the principle is reversed and no one is visible.

The facility’s beauty stands in stark contrast to its task. The wall may have disappeared but freedom is still a distant prospect. For Van der Sluis the issue is not whether a designer can solve this problem, but what he can initiate. That is where his responsibility lies. At night the domes, which Van der Sluis knowingly calls ‘sportdomes’, are transformed into beacons: the light calls attention to a hopeless situation.

Willem van der Sluis graduated as a fine artist in 1996 from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. He now works as a product designer on client-focussed solutions inspired by technology and nature.