Louis Le Roy (1924) has been working for more than thirty years on an enormous structure in a meadow at the Friesian settlement of Mildam near Heerenveen. 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'. 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?
This book zooms in on those two aspects crucial to his work: 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. So the project he began is expected to be continued by others at least until the year 3000.
The ideas underpinning Le Roy's project - the importance of the time factor in spatial processes, and working with complex, dynamic systems and networks - make it relevant to current discourse on architecture, urban design and spatial planning.
Louis Le Roy, Nature-Culture-Fusion is intended for a wide public: planners, architects, policy-makers in spatial planning or nature conservation, and everyone interested in ecology, nature and art.
Its pages are copiously illustrated with photographs by Philippe Vélez McIntyre, who has been following Le Roy's work first-hand for many years.
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