Vauban, his Fortifications and Maastricht
A lecture by Jeroen van der Werf
During the reign of Louis XIV, Vauban led the construction of fortifications along all the borders of France. His oeuvre can be considered as an overview of seventeenth century fortress construction. It still leaves an important mark on the landscape of the country. Using many pictures and drawings, this lecture treats the career of Vauban and his vision on the strategic use of the landscape for fortress construction. Of course, his famous conquest of Maastricht, in June 1673, will be part of the story of this remarkable engineer as well.
Bio: Jeroen van der Werf (1973) studied building engineering and building history. He has been studying fortifications, and especially those of Vauban, since 2004. Today he works for Monumentenbezit. The foundation that is the owner of the fortifications of Naarden. He does research on these fortifications and manages the restoration works.
- Date: Tuesday 3 October
- Location: Centre Céramique| Avenue Céramique 50 | 6221KV Maastricht|
- Time: 20.00 – 21.00 uur
- Reservation required: klantenservice@maastricht.nl
Additional cost: FREE
Congress logo
Every self-respecting congress needs a logo. A logo that shows what the congress stands for and how it wants to present itself. The logo of the 8th EFFORTS congress wants to radiate connection and decisiveness. I hope that this will be seen as such. Where does the logo come from? As the organizer of the conference, I had been looking for a good logo for a while and as it often goes: it is usually right in front of you! Toma Leufkens, now 13 years old, sold me one of his homemade cards two years ago to help finance his camp week.
The theme of the cards: shapes and connection. Just what I needed. Moreover, the card had just been on my bookshelf for two years! When I took it in my hands the other day, it was immediately clear: This will be the logo of the congress. Of course, I asked the creator for permission and fortunately, he agreed. The logo reminds me of a stylistically rendered fortification where different shapes are connected. Alessandro Pasqualini could have sketched it! The company that developed our corporate identity, CaVaBien, also responded enthusiastically to this logo. Of course, it was adjusted a bit in terms of colour scheme, but the power it has is retained.
Congress bag
People who regularly attend a conference will have plenty of them at home: conference bags. Personally, I keep in the bag all information regarding that specific conference: travel documents, leaflets, program booklets, etc. It is rare that I actually use the conference bag anymore. And that's actually a shame, of course. EFFORTS stands for sustainability and signed the European Green Deal. It was therefore a moral duty for us to see if we could find a conference bag that could do justice to these principles. During a visit to an artist friend, Freya Vaes, she said that she was making bags from old banners from a festival. Not only did the bags look beautiful, but also the idea of reusing old banners, which would normally have gone through the shredder, appealed to me. And as it turned out: within our municipality of Maastricht there were a lot of old banners waiting to be destroyed. Moreover, there were very nice banners, colourful and with beautiful representations on them. We soon decided that I could take the banners with me (thanks to Lilian Cortenraad!) and ask the artist if she could make our conference bags from them. Of course, she could! Together we decided that it should be a bag that the participants could also use after the congress.
We chose a laptop size. After a few trial copies, I was satisfied and the order to manufacture the bags was given to Freya. With my car loaded with banners, I went to her studio and she started making the bags. Such handmade bags are obviously a lot more expensive than the “Made in China” ones. Fortunately, the Circular Economy department of the Municipality of Maastricht was willing to bear the costs of manufacturing the bags, for which very big thanks! It feels like a great support when your colleagues help your initiatives in such a way. Now, of course we hope that these bags have a long life as a laptop bag or just as a shopper….