The commission

A compost park in Willebroek-South appears to be an important meeting point. Reason for a group of compost makers, in 2009, to commission an artwork from an ecological, biological and sociological perspective that links 'composting' and 'social meetings'.

The artwork

The artist Angelo Vermeulen, who also studied biology, responded by building an open vertical structure which houses the microbiodiversity living inside it. He assembled recycling, composting, biodiversity, water reusing and renewable energy in his so-called biodiversity tower. The tower is the locals' new meeting point and soon became a landmark in their multicultural neighbourhood. Warmed by compost at the base, animals and plants develop through ventilation and water pumped by a small windmill on the top.

The biodiversity tower is one of the five artworks of the campaign WILLEBROE!.

Angelo Vermeulen

Angelo Vermeulen (born 1971) is a Belgian visual artist. His multidisciplinary œuvre crosses over the boundaries of biology, technology and community. Vermeulen won the Witteveen+Bos Art+Technology Award in 2012. He is crew commander of HI-SEAS, a Mars simulation study on improving the nutritional value of space food, funded by NASA. His art and community project Biomodd, launched in 2003, is still up and running in different locations across the world. Vermeulen founded Space Ecologies Art and Design (SEAD), an artistic research platform on the architectures and biopolitics of space colonization in 2009. Angelo Vermeulen is a member of the Arts & Science Topical Team of the European Space Agency (ESA).