Author: Lennart Arpots

Everybody seems to have a memory or association with these kinds of places. I am talking about the Shell refinery in the Port of Rotterdam, once the biggest refinery in the world, still the biggest oil refinery in Europe. Similar places, like DSM in the south of the Netherlands or the petrochemical complexes in the ports of Antwerp and Hamburg, bring back memories of sitting in the back of your parents’ car while driving back from a summer holiday, in awe of the magically shimmering lights of seemingly endless industrial sites, like technological cities glowing in the evening sky. Inaccessible, almost alienating environments exist behind their gates, unknown to the public yet incredibly important for our daily lives.