The Sophia railwaytunnel, built underground in the city of Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht at a depth of a twenty meters, has an impressive length of eight kilometres. Halfway, the tunnel reaches a shaftbuilding aboveground located at the centre of a residential area.

It is designed as a functional looking building made of black rough concrete, glass, with black steel doors and a casing of perforated stainless steel. Even though there is a lot of movement underground, aboveground there is no activity at all. Generally speaking the building will be unmanned and for security reasons the surrounding area is left vacant. The atmosphere around the building is rather spooky and mysterious. To underline this quality, I designed a huge spider’s web to be made out of white neonlight and to be installed at the back of the casing.

The spider’s web is by its tunnelperspective a kind of announcement of the building’s function. It is also a representation of ‘the web of roads that is more and more encircling the world”.


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