Our research focuses on the Wielewaal Estate, a new public park in Eindhoven, similar in size to New York’s Central Park. Built by the Philips family as their private residence, it changed hands to another millionaire in 2005 and then to the city of Eindhoven in 2022. The municipality cited the purpose of the purchase to preserve the cultural legacy of the Philips family. In September 2025, the park partly opened to the public.
The Estate, assigned to us as an inaccessible site of research, challenged us on how to research a place we cannot be in. As first year Critical Inquiry Lab students, we were tasked to investigate the park through non-human lenses. Some resistance emerged, something felt off, random, frustrating and forced in connection. While having just arrived in Eindhoven, we were already asked to separate ourselves from our human position and engage with what looked like just another park. How do we work when there is neither connection nor intrigue to guide us to a meaningful investigation?
We explored many ways of relating; spending a lot of time at the Wielewaal; taking long walks, chatting on picnic blankets and even attempts to sleep inside the park, moving with awe and frustration at the spectacle of wealth in this curated space.
Where there was no immediate relation to the park, there emerged a relation. For some, in finding ridicule in it all. Others spent time with their senses, attempting to follow the unknown to find what they might have been looking for. Some felt the need to mediate their connection to their informants, by using tools of calculation to create a sense of intimacy. And then, how to do all of this, but to also leave space for the undefined and the abstracted?
So …… Through the tick…. I found myself …… through the mask …… I found myself ….. through the birdhouse ….. I saw myself struggle…… invasive species …. am I not exactly that?
Tactics
Projects
Qi Chen
Pong
Jiyoung Jeong
isabella culotta
Helen Jiayu Zhang
Mari Díaz
Anabel Dhellemmes
Isa Bongers
Ian Diesendruck
Nadia Usai
Álvaro
Shenhuan Lu
Author Name (if you like)
Colophon
Editorial Team
Maithili Phatak, Bella Culotta, Mari Diaz Quintero, Isa Bongers