Fortuyn/O'Brien's work usually involves existing spaces or architectural elements, which she often modifies to enhance the interplay between interior and exterior. In her Messestadt project, entitled 'Dolls' housing', this Dutch artist addresses the local architecture and its interior design. The project comprises two stages.

In the first stage, the artist will select residential units from Messestadt building and ground plans and reconstruct them at a scale of 1:12. The choice of unit type and building contractor will be as wide as possible, ranging from small flats to three-storey apartments. Fortuyn/O'Brien will then let the children of Messestadt's two kindergartens play with the doll's houses. A few weeks later, the child therapist Monica Zeevenhooven and the kindergarten teachers will join the artist in holding a one-week workshop for these three to seven-year-olds.

The children are to decorate and furnish the houses as they wish using paper, cardboard, bits of cloth, ribbons, braid, foil, paint and so forth. In order to limit the children's imagination as little as possible, the doll's houses will remain empty and the individual rooms will not be assigned a specific function. The children will be given specially made dolls with which to play in the houses. Fortuyn/O'Brien will not influence the children's aesthetic decisions, but she will be concerned to watch how they behave towards their own miniature living space.

In the second stage of the project, due to be carried out in autumn 2001, Fortuyn/O'Brien will enlarge the children's decoration and furnishing of the doll's houses in a new residential building in the area, transferring the 'distorted' proportions to the 'real' world. In doing so, she will reproduce precisely the tables, beds and chairs, the colours and materials of the walls, floors and curtains, and even fingerprints, splodges of paint and traces of glue. The resulting installation will be open to the public in October 2001.

Summer 2001