Any Dutch person involved with design in one way or another has ended up in Rotterdam at some point in their life. Maarten Statius Muller, founder of Statius PR, an international consultancy specialising in contemporary craft, design, architecture and art, lives in Antwerp. He graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven and trained in Rotterdam.
A monument to his work in the city of modern architecture is the stylish control panel for a giant installation of streetlights in the form of red cranes on the legendary Schouwburgplein. On ordinary days, the panel is in a state of peaceful slumber, standing in an elegant sag in the square. But on holidays, city residents can use the panel to interactively reconfigure the hydraulic lighting, transforming the large square into a huge stage. ‘Points of light’ projected by 45-metre crane lights onto the square change as the lights are raised and lowered. Let me remind you that cranes are a totemic phenomenon for Europe’s 1st port and the installation cuts into the nerve of Rotterdam with a red line respect for the genius loci, the genius of place. To draw a parallel, in Antwerp, vintage cranes adorn the Schelde promenade.
The main design challenge for the square was the need to build on top of the existing underground garage, which could not support the heavy loads. The designers used ultra-lightweight materials (modern design is constantly on the hunt for new ones) and the square is a mosaic of different textures: wood, perforated steel plates, granite, epoxy and rubber. Maarten Statius Muller created the elegant control panel for the streetlights cranes (a work of contemporary design in itself) that magically transforms Schouwburgplein into Rotterdam’s main stage.
Maarten Statius Muller lives in Antwerp and plays an important role in consulting and press coverage of the Benelux design scene. I really like the motto of his Statius PR consultancy, ‘рragmatic раѕѕion’, with which he approaches his work.
