In the late 1940s, work star­ted on one of the biggest land reclam­a­tion pro­jects ever in the Neth­er­lands. Based on a plan by engin­eer Cor­nel­is Lely, two large polders were reclaimed in lake IJs­sel­meer, the former Zuiderzee. In 1968 the long-term pro­ject was com­pleted. Both polders were struc­tured with a geo­met­ric pat­tern of canals, roads and fields. The empty new land proved an ideal place for exper­i­ments. At Water­loop­bos, Dutch water engin­eers spread scale mod­els of water man­age­ment pro­jects in a forest. In the 1990s com­puter sim­u­la­tions took over, and the scale mod­els were simply aban­doned in the forest. In 2018 the trans­form­a­tion of a giant wave tun­nel into the stun­ning Delta­work sculp­ture added a con­tem­por­ary touch to this his­tor­ic site. 

Sev­er­al oth­er (land)art works have been installed on the ration­al­ist polders over the dec­ades – most of them cel­eb­rat­ing the flat­ness and arti­fi­ci­al­ity of the landscape.