The public artwork Face2Face for the new town hall of Zoetermeer combines the present and past of the city, which has evolved over the past 400 years from a small fishing village into one of the largest growth centers in the Netherlands.
On 9 large glass walls in the building, life-sized images of groups of inhabitants of Zoetermeer from earlier times are applied with a modern variant of stained glass.
These historical images are thermally printed in a coarse grid with the white of the image remaining transparent. Because of this transparency (an important principle of municipal policy and the design of the building), the environment and image will merge into one image in which the present and the past come together.
At all 9 places in the building where the transparent historical images are placed, the current residents of Zoetermeer and residents of the past seem to meet. The artwork Face2Face thus symbolically bridges the past 400 years and allows the inhabitants from the past and present to come together in a special way in the new town hall.