The Dutch Gov­ern­ment proves again that they see Archi­tec­ture as one of NL’s marketing-​worthy assets. The Royal Dutch Mint has released 10 and 5 Euro coins dis­play­ing the names of impor­tant con­tem­po­rary and his­toric archi­tects, as well as some of their pub­li­ca­tions. Not build­ings, these seem to be reserved for bills. The deci­sion to focus on theory, not prac­tice, ties in with the gen­er­ous fund­ing Nether­lands sup­ports archi­tec­ture pub­li­ca­tions with. The ease to shell out books con­tributed to the ‘Super-Dutch’ era in the 90ies.

The mill about the coin design:

he Archi­tec­ture five-​euro coin was designed by artist Stani Michiels (b. 1973). The design on the obverse of the coin pays trib­ute to the his­tory of Dutch archi­tec­ture, with the por­trait of Queen Beat­rix being dis­tinc­tively con­structed using the names of impor­tant archi­tects from Dutch his­tory. The artist used the inter­net as a popularity-​meter to deter­mine the names’ order of appearance.

The reverse of the Archi­tec­ture five-​euro coin draws atten­tion to the strik­ing fact that many Dutch archi­tects have also included pub­lish­ing books on archi­tec­ture in their pro­fes­sional activ­i­ties. To illus­trate this phe­nom­e­non, recent books on archi­tec­ture rise up from the sides of the coin like build­ings. Through their care­ful place­ment they com­bine to out­line the Nether­lands, while birds’ sil­hou­ettes sug­gest the cap­i­tals of all the provinces.

You can buy it in the Mint’s coin store.