Wouter in the central space of the steel maze on the old mining site C-mine, Genk, Belgium, 2022.

There’s an enduring stereotype that women tend to be worse than men when it comes to spatial reasoning. Mentally rotating an object, coming up with strategies to maneuver a big piece of furniture through small corridors, giving directions through a city, navigating through a maze, even reading a map ― basically anything that requires visualizing and manipulating 3D objects is thought, by some, not to be women’s strong suit. But there remain many holes in this popular narrative. Are women born different or brought up differently? Would it be possible to close the gap with training? Does the gap even really exist, or does it depend on the particular tests used to measure spatial cognition? Could it be that men and women tend to make use of different mental processes when solving spatial problems? Different ways of coming up with solutions for everyday spatial problems could explain why men seem to preform better in certain environments because for centuries much of the layout and mapping of the world surrounding us was - and to this day often still is - predominantly determinded by other men.

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Stacked steel tubes form Waterline Monument by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh

Hundreds of stacked, weathered steel tubes form this arched monument in Laagraven Park, Utrecht, designed by architecture and art studio Gijs Van Vaerenbergh.

The Waterline Monument was created to celebrate the New Dutch Waterline being awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2021.

The Waterline Monument is a steel tubed monument that was designed by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh

Operational from 1815 to 1940, the New Dutch Waterline was a defensive system of canals, forts and bunkers that enabled areas of land to be strategically flooded in order to make them inaccessible in the event of an invasion.

Stretching from Muiden, outside Amsterdam, down to what is now the Biesbosch National park near Rotterdam, the area has since become a popular route for cycling and hiking, with many of its forts, bunkers and locks still intact.

The installation was constructed using hundreds of weathered steel tubes

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh saw these historic structures as being crucial to the "collective memory" of the area. For the design of the monument, the studio abstracted the form of one of the many locks along the route using a welded stack of metal tubes.

"By presenting the lock in its essential form, that is, three arched openings at right angles to the viewing direction, the image is shifted from that of a lock to that of an (entrance) gate," said the studio.

"As the sculpture is situated on top of the slope, it is also reminiscent of a triumphal arch. The play with the recognisability of these different forms imbues the work with ambiguous meanings," it continued.

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Read:

Concrete bunker in the Netherlands transformed into a tiny vacation home

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From a distance, the monument is designed to appear as a solid structure, similar to many of others dotted along the route of the New Dutch Waterline.

When approached, however, the different lengths of tube and their hollow forms cause this initially solid appearance to "dissolve" as visitors move around it.

Steel tubes have different lengths

"The work always presents itself as a solid stack of tubes, except when visitors pass by it. The gaze then not only passes through the arches of the gate, but also through the tubes themselves," said the studio.

"For a brief moment, the image dissolves; the artwork becomes partially transparent. This creates a special, elusive moment of wonder and a new perception of spatiality," it continued.

From certain points, the Waterline Monument looks as though it is solid

The structures along the New Dutch Waterline have been the site of many previous architectural interventions.

Belgian studio B-ILD converted a former bunker into a tiny holiday home, and RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon created a sculptural visitor attraction by slicing a bunker down its middle to create a route through its interior.

The photography is byJohnny Umans.

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