To do and see: 7 September to 13 September 2026
Along with the French artist Olivier Grossetête and hundreds of Maastricht residents, the museum will construct a monumental cardboard building almost twenty metres in height.
Ready for take-off
At least 300 Maastricht residents are eagerly looking forward to this Groete Bouw Day. In the preceding week, they will come together in the Bonnefanten to make components for the artwork. Another unique joint achievement will be stacking and erecting the cardboard elements, purely by muscle power. And the construction is just the start of a weekend in which The Groete Bouw will once again write history.
Bone of contention in cardboard
The Groete Bouw will not just be erected. It will actually be resurrected, as the building really existed. The Groete Bouw is Maastricht’s name for the Cité Ouvrière, a 19th-century tenement where workers from the Sphinx pottery lived in appalling conditions. In 1938, Maastricht wanted to get rid of this disgrace to the city, so The Groete Bouw was demolished. This project is therefore not just about art, but also about heritage and storytelling. A painful chapter in Maastricht’s industrial past will be brought to life again temporarily, following which we will all join in saying farewell to it again. The construction and eventual demolition of The Groete Bouw will once again give this history a literal place in the city.
Bonnefanten outside the museum walls
By presenting The Groete Bouw, Bonnefanten is bringing art into the city. Together with Olivier Grossetête and hundreds of Maastricht residents, the museum is linking international contemporary art to a special chapter of local history. Not watching from the sidelines, but coming together to create, to construct and to demolish: In this project, art becomes an experience for the whole city.
The timeline of the whole Groete Bouw project:
- One week of construction workshops
From 7 to 11 September, Bonnefanten will be transformed into a big construction site. Pupils, local associations and local residents will join Grossetête’s team in making lots of components for The Groete Bouw out of cardboard and tape. People who have not often met up before will work together on the construction, while sharing new stories. - The Groete Bouw Day
On Saturday 12 September, all the components will be brought to the Vrijthof Square, where the public will help to stack them up. No cranes will be used: everything revolves around muscle power and the power of collaboration. At the end of the day, The Groete Bouw will be displayed in all its glory on the Vrijthof Square, bathed in light. - Maastricht Year 2026 and The City Parade
On Sunday 13 September, the Bonnefanten project The Groete Bouw will form one of the highlights of The City Parade of the Maastricht Year 2026 celebrations. The cardboard structure will be number 9 on the route. Around The Groete Bouw on the Vrijthof Square percussion group Segura and dance school Reality will perform a theatre spectacle that relates to the history of the former tenement and symbol of inequality. At the end of the performance around 15:30 p.m., the public will be invited to knock down The Groete Bouw together, bringing the former Maastricht tenement full circle.
This brings to an end a week in which Bonnefanten joins the city in constructing an artwork and building on a shared story about Maastricht.
The artist
Olivier Grossetête (1973, Paris) has already brought various buildings-with-a-story temporarily to life in cardboard, all over the world. He is internationally renowned for his monumental participative art projects, in which people come together to construct impressive architecture out of cardboard. Bonnefanten invited Grossetête to join the museum in realising The Groete Bouw.
This project has received support from:
Provincie Limburg, Gemeente Maastricht en het Ministerie van OCW.