The Dutch West Caribbean Company

Abstract

The Dutch west Caribbean company is a modest proposal. The company was created as an architectural response to an ongoing geopolitical and geoeconomic process (the development of the offshore economy). A process, whereby not only unusual goods such as artworks, battles of wine and stolen antiquities (that were in times past, part of the collective goods) were turned into commodities, but also basic human rights such as the right to asylum, freedom of speech, right to health and more are being turned into commodities. The Dutch west Caribbean company is focused on tax havens and the Freeport as a withdrawal facility, one that seeps through the cracks of national sovereignty and establishes its own logistics network.

The offshore world has been gaining enormous popularity since the 1980’s and despite increasingly defining the operations of the globalized economy and the spaces it generates, it is a spatial phenomenon that is mostly ignored by the architectural and urban discourse. Manifested by the forms of tax havens, freeports and special economic zones, the offshore world offers an exterritorial space where people, objects, and capital can operate beyond the burdens of national sovereignty, and remain in an unregulated limbo, in theory, forever.