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Sometimes art in public spaces contrasts with its surroundings. At other times, it harmonises with it. The latter was the choice of the Visual Arts Advisory Group, which, in the late 1980s, was responsible for implementing the percentage rule for the new building of the then Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM). Architect Jan Hoogstad had designed a new accommodation right next to The Hague's Central Station. Clear forms, a transparent construction, consistent dimensions and symmetry predominated. That is why the art had to be above all concrete, with the emphasis on form and without too much emotion.

The Rotterdam artist Dicky Brand was commissioned to make a sculpture for the most visible spot: the subway where the entrance is also located. The committee chose Brand partly because her sculptures show both the inside and the outside at the same time. In line with her other commissions and free work, she made a large geometric abstract sculpture from painted sheet steel for the former VROM. At almost ten metres long, it extends to the third floor of the building.

The main shape of the sculpture is a purple ellipse. This shape is reminiscent of a seedpod or leaf and thus implicitly refers to the environment, one of the three policy areas of VROM. In this ellipse Brand inserted a cross, which in turn refers to spatial planning, another branch of this ministry. In the cross is a gold-coloured pyramid. With this shape, the sculptor wants to evoke associations with pointed roofs of houses and with public housing. After all, the way in which the artist combined the three different forms says something about how the policy areas related to each other around 1990. Public housing fell within the scope of spatial planning, and together they were encompassed by environmental management.