Sowing and harvesting are neither a beginning nor an end, but a movement that escapes control. The moment of sowing is clear: an action, a decision, an intention. What follows, however, is intangible. Between sowing and harvesting lies a period that cannot be fixed, a time of growth, waiting, doubt, and care. It is precisely there, in that in-between, that the essence unfolds.
Sowing is the allowance of something greater than oneself. It is the placing of a thought, a body, an action into time, without any guarantee of outcome. Harvesting, on the other hand, may appear as a moment of completion, yet it is never fully so. What is harvested is not an endpoint, but a transition, a shift in form, in meaning, in carrier.
In this sense, the process outweighs the result. Arendt describes the cultivation of crops as one of the most fundamental human activities: a form of labor that is necessary for life, cyclical in nature, and continuously repeating without aiming for a definitive end product. In that light, I do not see the construction of a space as something essentially different, but rather as its cultivation. Building and cultivating converge here, yet it is the latter, working within cycles of growth, care, and disappearance, that, to me, touches the core.
This cycle calls for action. Not only thinking, but doing. Sowing itself is an act, but so too is what follows: tending, intervening, adjusting, or letting go. Just as crops require water in order to grow, the act of making demands continuous engagement. Through acting, trying, and observing what may emerge, something is given the chance to take shape beyond predetermined frameworks.
Architecture exists within that same rhythm. Not as an object that is placed and remains, but as an experience that unfolds over time. As in the films of Tarkovsky, where the narrative does not always reside in words but manifests through time, image, and sensation, architecture too can be experienced in this way. It does not need to be fully understood to carry meaning. It can be seen, felt, heard, and it is precisely there that its strength resides.
What takes form is not confined to walls or roofs. It extends beyond them, into bodies, into memory, into the way a place is lived and perceived. Architecture thus becomes not a final product, but a process of sowing, tending, and letting go, a collective act in which people situate themselves within a shared environment, influence one another, and allow meaning to grow together.
An intervention may be placed as a seed, yet in the period of cultivation it will rarely behave exactly as intended. Like a plant seeking its own path toward light, a space too may develop in unforeseen ways, shaped by use, time, and context. It is precisely in that bending, in that deviation from the plan, that the possibility of something truly alive emerges.
The question remains: who or what determines when it is time to harvest? And what does it mean to be harvested? Perhaps harvesting is not a moment we choose, but one that presents itself, when something has been allowed to grow sufficiently, or when it is time to make space for something new. What remains is not an object, but an experience. An awareness of time, of rhythm, of cycles that continue to repeat without ever being the same. Sowing and harvesting are not opposites, but parts of the same movement.
From this understanding, I perceive architecture as an ongoing act, a process of cultivation in time, where growth, care, and release are inseparably intertwined.
Date 10 April - 31 May
Location Bureau Europa, platform voor architectuur en design
Admission free