For Future Sonic Remains
Abstract
What if listening to the phantoms of third nature allow us to connect to future generations?
What will future generations hear if we remain silent today?
Neglected buildings are more than just relics of the past - they are silent witnesses to previous realities, social upheaval and urban transformation. But they are disappearing.
We understand these places as third landscapes, as places between use, between control and chaos - as zones of change, which is a rare quality in a society that is fixated on control over space, time and nature. The loss of these spaces is also the loss of an experiential space for uncertainty, for possibility, for freedom, for culture.
In a world, where cultural memory is disappearing, sound creates a timeless access to repressed urban histories. Sound recordings serves as an acoustic archive of a past place - as an audible preservation of history, memory and atmosphere.
By recording and listening to these sounds, a space is created in which the past, present and future unite. This creates a sonic balance that makes intergenerational fairness tangible: spatial justice across time.
Eindhoven’s urban landscape is highly curated—clean and orderly designed. Abandoned areas are quickly sanitized: wild vegetation is removed, and the past is erased to make way for new structures, driven by economic interests. However the Third Landscape is crucial as a site of biodiversity, freedom, and potential. Rather than fearing these in-between spaces, we should embrace their possibilities and reimagine their role within the urban structures.
A community that already interacts with these sites are urbexers—people that explore abandoned human-made structures. Their knowledge is gathered in an online accessible global map, which served as our starting point to explore Eindhoven’s hidden places. But—Many of them are not existing anymore, or not accessible. They are gone, hidden, they are protected. One specific site still caught our attention and we dived into the history of the place, researching about its past.
During World War II, the German occupiers built a settlement called “Siedlung an der Oirschotsedijk” in Eindhoven. This camouflaged airbase meant to resemble a typical Brabant village from the air – completed with a “fake church“. After the liberation, the site was renamed “Beatrix Camp”, still used as a military airbase.
In the 1980s, the runway of Eindhoven Airport was relocated, making the area uninhabitable. Just a few years later it still became a refugee center and remained so until 2011. In 2012, most of the buildings were ultimately demolished and the nature reserve Prinses Beatrixbos was created. The fake church was preserved and became a habitat for bats. 2017 the plan was to repurpose the fake church for hay storage by a local shepherd. However, it is unclear whether this interim use was realised. Six years later, a squatter brought back life into the vacant but just for a short amount of time. Finally, in October 2024, the fake church was also the last building to be demolished, marking the end of the last remaining structure from this wartime site. Everything that is left now is a pit— together with some leftovers of the church.
Intergenerational justice means that today's decisions do not ignore the needs of future generations - be it in questions of housing, urban development or access to cultural sites. The demolition of supposedly “purposeless” buildings deprives future generations of the opportunity to rethink or creatively reinterpret their stories.
Each recorded sound is an audible testimony to what was - and an invitation for what will come. The sounds of decay, the voices of past residents, the sonic emptiness - all this makes audible what otherwise disappears in silence.
Our aim is to create an open, multi-media archive - accessible for future generations, as a tool of collective memory culture, as an impetus for new narratives, as an invitation to listen, think and dream on.
