Ontwerp van het Vondelpark te Amsterdam 1860 - 1880

This is Johan David Zocher's design for the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, made some time in the mid-19th century. It’s made with ink and watercolour on paper, with the kind of precise rendering only possible through careful drawing skills. But let's think about what this drawing represents: not just a park, but the labor required to build it. Consider the legions of workers who would have been needed to move earth, plant trees, and construct the park's waterways. The design itself, of course, took time and skill. There are no CAD programs here, or digital renderings. What we have here is a record of the intellectual labor that prefigures all the physical labor to follow. And in the careful application of watercolour, we see a hint of the care that was intended to be lavished on the park itself. It’s no accident that parks like this emerged in the industrial era. They are fantasies of nature, created in response to the social and environmental costs of capitalism.