Description

Oosterwold, in the south-eastern tip of Almere, some 35 kilometres outside Amsterdam, was a potato field just a few years ago. Like everywhere else in the polder province of Flevoland, perfectly straight paths traverse completely man-made agricultural land. When the polder was completed in 1977, no-one would have thought that here of all places would become the site of an experiment in urban laissez-faire. Today, however, a 43 km² new district with 15,000 flats is being built in Oosterwold that aims to turn Dutch urban and regional planning culture on its head.

The only organising principle of the master plan developed by MVRDV is the distribution of functions: 18% of the land may be built on, 8% is reserved for roadways, 13% for public green space, 2% for water areas and 59% for urban gardening. No specifications were made about building forms, except that construction on the plots should be as concentrated as possible. The intention is that a patchwork of sustainable initiatives can develop organically, transforming the monofunctional farmland into a multifunctional residential area. Future residents had to agree to conduct their own archaeological site investigations, to lay their own pile foundations, and be responsible for the entire infrastructure. The construction and maintenance of roads, energy production, sewage treatment, waste disposal, maintenance of public green spaces – everything is the responsibility of the residents, who are accordingly not referred to as builders but as “initiators”. In return, their piece of potato field would cost only 30 euros per square metre. Halfway through, however, the city of Almere decided to appoint a director for the region and to produce a land use plan. The result is a mixture of surprisingly conventional detached houses (including projects by commercial developers) interspersed with experiments, such as a house with walls made of discarded car tyres.

The artist Frode Bolhuis was also attracted by the concept and the location but had insufficient funds for a single-family house. He contacted the architects Peter van Assche (Bureau SLA) and Mathijs Cremer (Zakenmakers), who advised him to join forces with other interested parties to create a joint project. To keep costs down, only the exterior of the building would be designed, and the interiors would be left to each resident. A short time later, Bolhuis came back with eight further families who together bought an 11,000 m² plot on the edge of some woodland.

On the eastern edge of this plot, facing the village, van Assche and Cremers designed a 100-metre-long, single-storey building with nine terraced units which recalls Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, not least because it is raised off the ground by about a metre so that it appears to float above the dirt access road. On the reverse side, all the units share a single long veranda that faces the large garden and the woodland beyond.

Two unit sizes of 160 m² and 120 m² were available and each household could divide them up as they wished: one wanted a studio, another preferred a large living room, while a third favoured a pragmatic layout and a fourth idiosyncratic, off-set walls. This flexibility was made possible by elevating the building off the ground: all the cable runs, pipes and ducts pass underneath the building and the floors, roofs and walls are all made of a timber frame structure filled with blow-in cellulose insulation. To add an element of variation to the façades, each household was given a set of seven window and door modules, which they were free to place in the garden façade, with frameless fixed glazing between them. The group constructed a wetland plant filter on the garden side to clean wastewater and solar panels on the roof generate electricity. Only the heating is individual for each household as a common heating network for multiple properties is not allowed in the Netherlands. Some units have an air-to-water heat pump, another a ground source heat pump, and one manages with just a wood stove. The combination of the casco strategy and simple construction meant that the building costs amounted to just 483 Euro (excl. tax) per square metre gross building area.

The predominantly wild garden now contains a communal bike shed, a tool shed, a pond, a small orchard of fruit trees, a chicken coop and even a small amphitheatre, all of which the residents can see from the shared raised veranda. This is both choice and necessity: collective approaches are required in the island location of Oosterwold. Some of the roads are still dirt tracks, and there are no shops, although there is now a pub. Residents take turns in driving the children to school on the other side of the village, and when one neighbour fell ill, the others cooked for the family. For those looking for individual ways of living in the Netherlands, it is necessary to be socially minded. The nine flats in this building are emblematic of this: despite their serial nature, they could not be more different.

Originally published in Bauwelt 5.2020, pp. 36-41, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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