Floor van Langen: Suriname
In my third year of my study Architecture at the Delft University of Technology I thought about doing a stage. At first I thought it would be good to do it in my home country, the Netherlands, because I wanted responsibility and I thought I would get that when I was speaking the language very well. Suriname is a Dutch speaking country. I have been there a couple of times and liked it very much, because it is a beautiful country with nice people living there. So my decision was easily made. I only had to arrange a place where I could do a stage and then I could go.
Arranging a stage took a bit longer then I thought in the first place. There were a couple of things that didn’t cooperate that well. The stage coordinator at my faculty didn’t think it was a good idea for me to go to Suriname and at one moment there wasn’t even a stage coordinator. Fortunately, I saw this poster of the ‘scriptiewerkplaats gebouwd erfgoed overzee’ (now ICOMOS Shared Built Heritage Student Help Desk) and that is how I got into contact with people who were interested in my plans and helped me with a place where I could do my stage in Paramaribo. That’s how I ended up at the Foundation Built Heritage Suriname (SGES).
All the hard preparations were worthwhile. The office stood in the most beautiful part of the city, at the bank of the Suriname River and close by the presidential palace. I enjoyed cycling to my work every day. My assignment at SGES was doing a research for a new functional destiny for a plantation house at the plantation Mariënbosch in the district Commewijne. For this research I spoke with people from different fields. I learnt a lot from those people, because they looked from a different angle to architectural problems. The chairman of SGES, Stephen Fokké, taught me also a lot. He was very enthusiastic and he introduced me to people for my assignment.
Life in Suriname is mostly outside; it is always crowded in the streets. I really felt at home when everybody from the neighbourhood knew me. It was a good experience to live and work for a couple of months in another country with a complete different culture than I was used to. Especially because of the work I got to know Suriname in a complete different way than I knew it already.
