29-01-2020

Dutch Design Daily

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Yuri Veerman yuriveerman.nl

Van Wie is de Stad?

By 29-01-2020

In 2018 Ruben Pater and Yuri Veerman launched the campaign Van Wie is de Stad? (Who owns the city?). A website with protest posters that are free to download and that draw the attention to a series of socio-economic problems in Amsterdam such as housing scarcity, rising house prices, sprawl of Airbnb addresses, mass tourism and speculation on the housing market. On the website it says: “To all residents of Amsterdam: use these posters, share them on social media, print them out and hang them in front of your window. Speak out against the clearance sale!” To Veerman’s and Pater’s surprise, this request was heard by illegal bill stickers who pasted half the city full with the posters that could be downloaded for free.

Yuri Veerman designed among other things also the posters “Bernhard van Oranje, The Prince with 349 houses” and “I don’t like monoculture”. In response to the Prince Bernhard posters that hung across the entire city, unknown supporters of the Prince have covered the posters with graffiti or tried to pull the posters off the walls. During this period Veerman was also approached by Jack de Vries (on behalf of Pinnacle, the real estate company which Prince Bernhard is part of) with the request to remove the relevant poster from the website. Veerman did not respond to this request.

Both posters have recently been added to the collection of the Amsterdam Museum. They are currently put on display in the exhibition ‘Save As…’.

Project initiative: Ruben Pater in cooperation with Yuri Veerman.
Design posters: Yuri Veerman
Website: vanwieisdestad.amsterdam