When I drive into the old monastery village from the motorway, via the provincial road and the ferry road, I feel time slowing down. I stop in front of the entrance to a large enclosed garden and open the gate. This is where the transition takes place. Street noises are drowned out by the quiet rustling of tree leaves and birdsong.

“Klein en meeslepend ('small and compelling' ),” reads the nameplate on the studio occupied by Ingeborg Meulendijks. She simply clipped the text out of a Dutch newspaper, but it perfectly describes the miniature rooms she builds out of wood. Despite their small scale, these models carry a huge impact, as if each tiny detail adds to the emotional charge of the piece.

“Klein en meeslepend ('small and compelling' ),” reads the nameplate on the studio occupied by Ingeborg Meulendijks. She simply clipped the text out of a Dutch newspaper, but it perfectly describes the miniature rooms she builds out of wood. Despite their small scale, these models carry a huge impact, as if each tiny detail adds to the emotional charge of the piece.

Since 1997, Ingeborg Meulendijks has been building her project the secret house, a large collection of models of interiors made mostly of wood.  Her bounded interior spaces represent a personal reality – spaces where memories, observations, dreams, and ideas come together.

Ingeborg Meulendijks' scale models pare down interiors to their very essence. In an austere space, which often exudes the same serenity and quietude as a Saenredam church interior, our attention is drawn to the few elements worked out in great detail. This may be tiles, miniature woodcuts, or inlaid wooden parquet flooring – all often indistinguishable from their life-size counterparts.

The work of the artist shows a quietude and serenity that is expressed in spaces with a meditative character. Meulendijks manages to capture the intimacy that comes with silence and transpose it into a concrete and unique experience. Add to that the sense of sanctuary that her work exudes, and you’ve got places where people can feel at home.

I am visiting Ingeborg Meulendijks’ studio and sitting on a stool. Ingeborg is making coffee in another part of the monastery building where she lives and works. Sounds from the convent garden drift in through the open window: birds, rustling trees and the distant radio of construction workers. Inside, it is quiet.  

Emily Dickinson, one of the great American poets of the nineteenth century, was confined to her home her entire life. Necessity made the interior her thinking space, where she used her poetry to build on a fairer house than prose. For this house, she disliked doors and preferred windows.

At the entrance gate of the Daelwijck cemetery in Utrecht, there is a small white letterbox with the words “To my beloved” written on it. Letters, poems and drawings sent here will also be delivered. We owe this to Ingeborg Meulendijks.

There is something Roman about the artwork To My Beloved, created by Ingeborg Meulendijks for the Daelwijck public cemetery in Utrecht. The brickwork, the oak canopy, the pebble floor... Classic, made to stand the test of time.

I look at a photograph by Ingeborg Meulendijks. A room, photographed in black and white. Filtered light shines in. Vague shadows fill the room. There is a suggestion of a season. Everything is still in this photograph; it is in perfect tranquillity. And that is precisely why it makes me think of speed. Of haste. The unrest of the world. My own restlessness. Has the world become faster? Have we become faster?

Since 1997, Ingeborg Meulendijks has been working on the same subject: The Secret House. An ongoing project in which the artist explores the perception and experience of space through scale models, handmade miniatures, photography, text and drawings. Her fascination with dollhouses,Oriental philosophy and interior architecture plays an important role in this. Isabel Ferreira de Sousa meets Meulendijks in the historic Tea House of Odapark, the location of her exhibition, and talks to her.