From his window, Theodor Reinhardt sees the flickering lights of the refineries. Banal, he calls it – so ordinary you almost overlook it. It led him to delve into how it all connects.
Reinhardt – cartographer, researcher and designer, trained as an architect at TU Delft – maps those connections in his work ‘You can be sure of Hell: Oil, Rotterdam and the Making of a Planetary Breakdown’. He sets the nine planetary boundaries alongside the growth of Rotterdam’s oil industry over time, up to the present, and shows how the oil infrastructure in and around the port is entangled in the breaking down of key planetary systems – locally and globally.
The installation is on view at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), this year built around the theme ‘Systems of Support’, and came about in part through the involvement of One Planet Port. In this episode of Diepgang, we walk through the work with Reinhardt – from what you see to what lies beneath.
Click here for more about the architecture biennale and tickets.
Filmmaker: Anne Ruijter en João Matheus Reis. With thanks to Theodor Reinhardt en IABR.
