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How can you make a building that has been standing in the city for fifty years visible again in a contemporary way? That was the question the Royal Academy of Art asked itself in 2001. Its premises, built in 1938 by architect Plantenga in the Nieuwe Zakelijkheid style, were once a landmark in the urban environment. It housed an art academy on the Prinsengracht. Over the course of fifty years, however, its building was increasingly surrounded by high-rise buildings that drew attention to themselves. Could a work of art make the academy visible again and visualise what this institution stands for?

With this in mind, the then director Jacques Verduyn Lunel sought contact with former student and now renowned artist P. Struycken. Struycken has worked in the abstract since the early 1960s. This is in order to fathom the laws behind what at first appears to be a chaotic nature. He analyses everything, including architecture and the experience of the environment, in terms of colour and form and their mutual relationships. He even interprets space as colour. In his computer-controlled light works, he takes this to the extreme. They literally fill the space with colour.

At the KABK, Struycken immediately opted for a strong and dynamic use of colour in the stairwell of the tower. He wanted to create a (red) flame of inspiration that would also be clearly visible from a greater distance. In this work, he combines for the first time two fundamentally different variations of light: change and displacement. During the project, he discovered that (technically speaking) you can make colour change gradually, while you can make colour change abruptly. After seven years of research, construction and adjustment, De Vlam was unveiled on 28 June 2008 at 23:00. This dynamic work of light art draws attention to the KABK: that is where inspiration begins.