Het Ding ('The Thing')

On the morning of April 12, 1974, students at Twente Technical University (THT) woke up to a strange sight on campus: a complex grid of telephone poles and steel wires mysteriously erected overnight on a university lawn.

The structure, dubbed “Het Ding” (“The Thing”), soon became a beloved and enduring symbol of THT, now the University of Twente. It came to represent the university’s open-minded and experimental spirit. Rather than dismantle the bizarre installation, the university decided to preserve it. When the wooden poles began to decay years later, protests from students and alumni convinced the school to replace it instead—accidentally reversing the orientation of the structure in the process.

The creators of Het Ding remained anonymous for decades until former students Jaap Hos and Jasper Latté revealed in 2013 that they and several classmates had designed and installed the piece. Inspired by the work of architect Buckminster Fuller, they used a model balancing push-and-pull forces to keep the structure stable. With materials donated by curious local companies, and the cooperation of campus security, they managed to assemble the massive installation in a single night.