In February 2023, I met Harvey Hendriks and Mees van de Ness from Generatie Groen (Generation Green) at their work place in Amsterdam Noord. They told me about their business that re-uses discarded and residual materials to make new products like art and wooden furniture. They do not purchase new materials and strive to never throw material away, using every last scrap in their work, as they believe that 'waste wood does not exist'. Their decision to do this aligns with their goal of encouraging people to not seek out and consume new products, but instead to look to what materials already exist. As they say, 'waar wij voor staan is waar wij op staan' (what we stand for is what we stand on).
During my visit, they also told me about a piece of wood from the 1400s that came from a water lock near Monnickendam, a city in North Holland. This really got my attention. Can you imagine working with a piece of wood that is almost 1000 years old? The beauty of this story is that this wood came from outside of Europe because the Netherlands did not have this specific type of wood needed to make the water lock. And now, hundreds of years later, the guys from Generation Green are re-using it.
what the archive is about
The Living Archive explores the potential of (post)industrial heritage to transform production in our cities. We collect stories with participatory heritage methods. The nodes for the local collection efforts are Fab City Hubs (FCH). The collection has been carefully assembled by FCH teams who have been learning about, co-creating and applying participatory heritage-making approaches, emotion networking methodology, oral history principles and creative perspective-taking. Select tags and categories to filter stories in the archive below. Explore their connections in the network graph.
