Shelf Unbound October/November 2013 October 2013 | Page 36

and more standard techniques employed in other countries. The result is a landscape
occasionally punctuated by sharp aesthetic contrasts between secret sites and the
rural and urban environments surrounding them.
In the original book of this series, these interventions are presented alongside physical alterations made to the Dutch landscape through a vast land reclamation project
that began in the 16th Century and is ongoing. A third of the Netherlands lies below
sea level and the dunes, dikes, pumps, and drainage networks engineered over hun34

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