In science, the content of the message outweighs the exterior form by which it is brought into the world. Current publications fail to impress upon prospective readers and colorful covers are believed to be an inappropriate way to attract attention. Dissertations, including ones published in Eindhoven, tend to appear in obligatory, insignificant or glaring wrappings that are hardly connected to their contents at all. Fortunately, there are still books with attractive covers, and an artist Gijs Frieling has selected sixteen of them are now painted on the walls of Atlas building, forming murals. The collected covers are from a period of time that roughly coincides with the total life span of the Atlas building, including the approximately six decades that preceded the current renovation from the mid-1950s onwards.
The context for this work of art is a building with the typical characteristics of post-war reconstruction architecture. A building, that in its original form could have carried off artistic additions like mosaic, graffito or intarsia quite well. The architectural language spoken in this building is the language of the engineer, feeling at ease with the industry. This is why the creators of Atlas originally chose concrete, steel and glass, everything being normalized and as transparent of expression as possible. Now that the “Main Building” is transformed into new “Atlas”, the architectural identity of the building is altered as well. The work of art is therefore very present, not as a motif that competes with the building, but as a simultaneous composition in visual surfaces.