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For more than thirty years, Louis Le Roy has been working on an enormous structure in a meadow at the Friesian settlement of Mildam in the Netherlands. There, on a two-hectare site, he piles up with his bare hands paving bricks, paving stones, kerbstones and other discarded street rubble while allowing nature to proceed about him unhindered. Le Roy calls this fascinating jungle populated by large stacked edifices an Eco-Cathedral. The ideas underpinning Le Roy's project are the importance of the time factor in spatial processes, and working with complex, dynamic systems and networks. Inspired by the Nobel Prize-winner Ilya Prigogine, Le Roy pondered the following question: 'What can one person achieve working with nature in space and time?' Le Roy's position on these concepts is at odds with the often rapid, super-efficient, function-hugging approach to greenspace and nature in the Netherlands. The Eco-Cathedral is a place where time regains space and space regains time. Le Roy expects it to be continued by others at least until the year 3000. To ensure the continuation of LeRoy's philosophy for future generations, the Time Foundation was established to promote insight and knowledge of the notion of ‘time’ as a condition for the creative development of cooperation between natural and creative human processes in space and time. Meanwhile, LeRoy's work in Mildam carries on and is open to the public. “The
methods of today’s planners will not prepare them for the
enormous problems that they will have to face in the next century.
One of the first things they have to do is accept infinite time
within their thinking system.” – Louis Le Roy |
