The Dutch struggle against water.

Location

Nieuwland Heritage Museum, Lelystad, the Netherlands

Objective

NorthernLight developed and designed one of the six new main exhibitions for the NieuwLand Museum. The NieuwLand Museum is all about the typical Dutch phenomenon known as ‘polder’: the reclamation of land.

The Water Theatre is an interactive exhibition with hands-on exhibits that address several questions around the reclaiming of land. It How does a polder stay dry? How are polders created? Who determines what goes where on the newly created land? How is it possible to live 5 metres under sea level?

Approach

The exhibition is designed as a real polder surrounded by a large water basin. And just like a real polder, the water level in the basin is higher than the exhibition floor itself! Just like the real situation in the Dutch ‘polders’. Visitors take on the role of engineers, urban planners, farmers or millers. Using pumps and dams they create waves in a huge water tank. They plan a new city, create farmland and try to keep a steam engine going to pump the land dry.

A popular group activity uses four different pumps to fill a large water tank. When fully filled, the tank overturns in a spectacular manner on top of farmer “Janus”, the central character of the exhibition, who is washing himself under the water tank.

Every half hour the gallery gets dark. Lightning flashes and a large wind machine causes a big storm. The laundry on the washing line flies in the wind!

The centre-piece of the exhibition is a seven ton Caterpillar tractor motion simulator. Aboard the tractor visitors experience a race through the typical polder landscape.

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