Passion for Delft tour
A short tour of the City of Delft...where the Brunel story began in 1975.
In a fun and interactive way, the tour takes you to hotspots, relates the history of Delft, traces the origins of Brunel and introduces Brunel Foundation initiatives to nurture a sustainable mindset.
All in a single tour. Have fun!
Duration
60 - 75 minutes
Starting point
18.00 p.m.: First Multec office (Oude Delft 182)
End point
19.30 p.m.: Café Restaurant The ‘V’ (Voorstraat 9)
Getting started
- During the tour, every team communicates with the Brunel Foundation via WhatsApp (team group).
- Appoint one person in the team to be in charge of sending the pictures via WhatsApp (preferably with a high-quality camera).
- Every photo message via WhatsApp should contain:
- The number of the assignment in the grid
- The photo itself
- Comments where necessary
What's the idea?
- The photo bingo card in the Correctbook consists of 9 squares.
- Each square represents a photo assignment.
- You can do the tour in any order, so you don't need to start with assignment 1 as long as you do them all in the end.
- Information on the individual assignments is provided below.
- In the Upcycled Brunel Trash ’n Trace bag you’ll find everything you will need during the tour.
- Share every picture in the WhatsApp group as soon as you have taken it.
- When the picture is approved, you will be sent a letter which you can write down in the Correctbook next to the assignment number.
- Once you have completed all the assignments and received all the letters, you need to work out the 2 words made up by the letters.
- Share the 2 words we are looking for via the WhatsApp group.
- If you guessed correctly, you'll be sent the word ‘BINGO’.
- You have now finished your tour and can make your way to Café Restaurant The ‘V’ for drinks and to join the other teams.
Winner
The fastest team to share 9 photos, have them approved by the Brunel Foundation and work out the 2 correct words from the 9 letters is the winner. The winner will be announced during dinner.
And yes, there's a prize for the winning team. But it’s a surprise – we’re not telling you what it is! Go for it!
Your Passion for Delft upcycled tour bag contains the following items:
- A Correctbook with a reusable BINGO card and QR code to start the tour
- A Correctbook pen
- A fold-up litter picker plus a small garbage bag
- Brunel Foundation Mepal water bottles (each team member can keep their bottle afterwards)
- A William of Orange banknote
- 3D glasses
- An upcycled case containing the William of Orange banknote and a city map
- A Trash ’n Trace card with a QR code
What you need to know about the upcycled bag
It is made by Vanhulley, a social enterprise. In their ateliers in the Netherlands, Vanhulley’s trainees make the most beautiful products from old fabrics and other textile waste. In the meantime, they are working towards a new life, receiving a vocational education which will ultimately help them chase their own dreams. Everything they make is produced with love and courage. The same goes for this Passion for Delft tour bag, which is made from old Brunel Trash ‘n Trace jackets.
Social media
We would love you to share pictures of you and your team during the Passion for Delft tour on social media, either during or after the tour. Please use the following handles and hashtags:
@Brunelfoundation @Brunel
Anyone who shares a post will be rewarded with a Brunel Foundation Forest Tree!
Go here to learn more about the Brunel Foundation Forest
1. The Blue Heart
The Blue Heart is a piece of art made in 1998. The artwork – consisting of blue glass panels on a stainless steel frame – references the Technical University (TU) as the technical 'heart' of Delft. The colour of the glass evokes Delft blue.
The artwork is specifically positioned to welcome tourists.
Brunel and the Blue Heart have a lot in common.
With all the yellow in Brunel's look and feel today, it’s hard to imagine that, in the early years – the Multec years, but also for many years afterwards – the company ‘owned’ the colour blue.
Brunel and the Blue Heart also both have their origins in Delft and were born of a passion for engineering. In 1975, Jan Brand, himself a graduate engineer, placed his first fellow engineer in a temporary position. This first placement under the name Multec marked the beginning of Brunel's colourful history.
The Blue Heart also relates to one of Brunel's most important core values: Passion for People.
Assignment:
Now it's time to show your Passion for People by making a great (team) picture in front of the Blue Heart. And if you look behind you, you might find a clue to your next assignment!
2. Trash ‘n Trace
Since Brunel Global Trash ‘n Trace was introduced with the Litterati app in June 2020, over 400,000 pieces of litter have been picked up and registered in our challenge. Brunellers, friends, family and many others have rolled up their sleeves and joined us on our journey to clean the Earth and eradicate litter.
The Litterati app empowers people to make a significant, measurable impact on the environment as individuals or teams. App users take pictures of pieces of litter they clean up and tag them. The app itself then applies a geo-tag and timestamps each picture. Together, all these pictures create an open-source database of litter maps around the world.
The collected data are used to create awareness, cultivate a new mindset and convince governments to introduce deposit programs, for instance, but also to challenge organizations to find sustainable solutions for a litter-free world. This initiative ties in with Brunel Foundation’s focus on actions to reduce (plastic) waste before it gets into the water.
Assignment:
We challenge you and your team to do your bit for the planet today! Using the fold-up litter picker, collect 20 cigarette butts and upload them to the Brunel Global Challenge in Litterati.
Take a picture of yourself throwing the garbage bag into one of photogenic trash bins around Delft.
What you need to know about cigarette butts
Smokers around the world buy roughly 6.5 trillion cigarettes each year. That’s 18 billion every day. While most of a cigarette’s innards and paper wrapping disintegrate when smoked, not everything gets burned. Trillions of cigarette filters—also known as butts or ends—are left over, only an estimated third of which make it into the trash bin. The rest are casually flung into the street or out a window. Cigarette filters are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate. When tossed into the environment, they dump not only that plastic, but also the nicotine, heavy metals and many other chemicals they have absorbed into the surrounding environment. Source: National Geographic Society
3. 3D glasses
Look through the 3D glasses and you will see a work of art by Delft’s most famous painter from the Golden Age. The painting you see is the only one that shows the artist himself. His birthplace is in Delft, as is his final resting place in the Old Church.
He is hailed as one of the greatest painters of the seventeenth century. He preferred timeless, subdued moments which remain enigmatic because of his inimitable colour scheme and bewildering light content. His paintings, mostly genre pieces interspersed with a few historic works, allegories and cityscapes, are set apart by the subtle use of colour and ideal compositions. The artist’s most famous works include The Milkmaid, View of Delft and Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Do you know which painter we are talking about? Throughout the city you'll encounter various works by the master himself – a fascinating expression of the rich street art culture the City of Delft has to offer.
Assignment:
For this picture you may choose any item, place, image etc. with links to this famous painter. Give free rein to your brain and look for a unique spot. Anything is possible! When sending your picture, add a comment about why you chose this particular perspective!
4. Diamant Inn
The night before William of Orange was murdered, Balthasar Gerards spent the night in Delft’s Diamant inn. This inn is now a city bakery called the Diamond Ring.
On the 10th of July 1584, Gerards slipped out early, armed with two loaded pistols and intent on committing the murder. Seen from the street, the window on the first floor above the store would be the room where Balthasar Gerards spent the night.
Today, the Diamond Ring is known for its sustainable way of producing bread, sandwiches and local speciality biscuits known as 'Scheve Jantjes' in honour of the Old Church (‘Scheve Jan’) in Delft.
Assignment:
Buy a biscuit tin filled with ‘Scheve Jantjes’ at the bakery with the banknote you'll find in the upcycled case in your bag. But before you pay, take a closer look at the banknote.
Share a picture of your team enjoying the biscuits in front of the bakery.
What you need to know about the Old Church of Delft
Work on constructing the church began in the mid-13th century. When the builders wanted to add a tower to the church in 1325, there was really nowhere to put it as the church stood on the waterfront. To make room for the tower, the moat was filled in. However, this turned out to be not such a good idea, to say the least: Even while the building was still under construction, the tower began to sink into the ground.A kink can be seen in the tower, which is now called Scheve Jan (or ‘Skewed John’). After it had begun to lean to the side during construction, the builders continued to work straight up. The tower stands 75 metres tall and leans about two metres from the vertical. That is not dangerous, however, as the tower has been stabilised.
5. Girl with a Pearl Earring
The Girl with a Pearl Earring is a painting from around 1665 by Johannes Vermeer. It has become his most popular painting and is also called the Mona Lisa of the North.
Until 1995, the painting was known as Girl with a Turban. Only then was it decided that the Girl with a Pearl Earring was a more fitting name. In 2014, experts concluded that the earring could not be a pearl, though: The reflection, pear shape and size are all alien to a common pearl. However, when confronted with the fact that the pearl in the painting is not actually a pearl, the museum indicated that it did not want to change the name again.
On 10th February 2023, the largest Vermeer exhibition was opened to the public. No fewer than 28 paintings from all over the world – from the US to Japan – have been temporarily transferred to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, making this exhibition the largest overview of the master ever. Seven paintings are on display in the Netherlands for the first time in more than two centuries. Even the Girl with a Pearl Earring has found a temporary new home.
Delft and the Girl with a Pearl Earring are inextricably linked. Her image looms on every corner of every street, striking or less striking depending on its use as the logo of hotels, cafés or simply as an expression of art.
Assignment:
What is your favourite piece of art based on the Girl with a Pearl Earring? Capture her with your camera. When sending the picture, add a comment about why you chose it!
6. Delft Blue
Delft Blue is the world-famous pottery that has been produced locally since the sixteenth century. Between 1600 and 1800, it was popular among wealthy families who liked to show off their Delft Blue collections. Although the city’s potters liked to call the material porcelain, it was in fact only a cheap variant of authentic Chinese porcelain.
Nevertheless, Delft Blue was extremely popular and at its peak there were 33 potteries in Delft. Nowadays there is only one left – Royal Delft – where the traditional Delft Blue is still made and then painted by hand by master artisans. Delft Blue has retained its popularity to this day and is regarded as ‘typically Dutch’.
Strolling through the city centre, you will encounter a lot of Delft Blue in different forms - from graffiti on walls to pimped-up electricity boxes, from Girl with a Pearl Earring mosaics to statues and vases.
Assignment:
Take a picture of the most beautiful Delft Blue item or image you come across on your tour.
7. William of Orange
William of Orange, later also known as William the Silent, was born in 1533 in the German town of Dillenburg. At the age of eleven, he inherited the French principality of Orange as well as substantial estates from his cousin in Holland.
Two conditions were attached to his inheritance: William had to adopt the Roman Catholic faith and be brought up at the royal court in Brussels. Given the impressive substance of the inheritance, William and his parents agreed.
In 1572, William of Orange moved to the Sint-Agathaklooster monastery in Delft, which was later renamed Prinsenhof and is today the Museum Prinsenhof Delft. He chose to live in Delft because it is one of the most readily defensible cities in Holland.
On July 10, 1584, William of Orange was murdered by Balthasar Gerards at Prinsenhof. He is buried in Delft's New Church. His grave was initially rather austere, but it was later decided that this was not sufficiently dignified. In 1614, the Amsterdam architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser was therefore commissioned to design a new funerary monument.
Since 1815, all Dutch monarchs and consorts have been buried atthe New Church in Delft.
Assignment:
Have you found Delft's New Church yet? Send us a team picture in front of it!
8. Water tap
The Brunel Foundation strives to change the mindset and habits of our colleagues to work towards a cleaner, more sustainable planet both now and in the future. We focus on raising awareness and stimulating Brunellers to use more sustainable alternatives in their work environment and at home.
All the changes we make together on a daily basis will impact the environment on a global scale, one habit at a time. One such change of habit is using reusable water bottles instead of disposable ones.
Water taps and refill stations are expanding all over the world, from Germany to Brazil, from Australia to UAE. They can be found in bars, companies, restaurants, hotels, shops and public spaces. Look out for the refill stickers on the windows.
The only thing you need to bring is your ever-lasting, reusable Brunel Foundation water bottle to get yourself a water refill. You’ll save money, reduce single-use plastics and do something good for your health.
Assignment:
Claim your Brunel Foundation reusable bottle, look for a place to get your refill and send in a picture of the filled bottle(s).
What you need to know about bottled water
- It takes three litres of water to produce one litre of bottled water.
- By 2050, scientists predict there will be more plastics in the ocean than fish.
- 85% of Australian seabirds are affected by plastic pollution.
- Bottled water contains between 118 and 325 elements of microplastic per litre on average.
Source: Choosetap.com.au
9. The Golden Alley
In this alley you’ll find the fruit of a special project: 'Delft is gold, you are gold'. In 2019, as part of this project, Delft residents were encouraged to buy a golden brick for someone they wanted to place in the spotlight. These golden bricks bear the name or initials of these individuals, and they are placed in what has become known as a ‘Golden Alley’. Nowadays there are some 2,000 of these golden bricks.
The bricks symbolise the special connection between people in Delft and beyond, making a tiny alley in a small city a singularly beautiful and special place.
The symbolism of the connecting bricks also resonates with Brunel’s DNA: It's all about connecting people and talent. Brunel is gold, you are gold!
Assignment:
Go to ‘The Golden Alley’ and find 2 different bricks bearing the name ‘Jan’. Take two pictures and share them in the app.