Description

Urban context

The Dutch city of Almere did not grow organically but is rather a synthetic city,
planned on the drawing board and built on polder reclaimed from the Ijsselmeer
after the war. The master plan for the new center of this city was worked out by
Rem Koolhaas. The striking feature of this central area is an artificially
elevated, curved foundation conceived as a car-free shopping zone, with a large
parking garage, bus lanes, and the east-west connection for noncommercial
traffic located beneath it. The solitary residential and commercial building
flanks the entrance to this “underworld” as the eastern vertex of the arched
plateau.

Ground-floor zone

The freely placed volume connects the traffic level with the shopping level above
it. Various open stairways in the plaza-like surroundings of the building
connect the elevated shopping center back to the natural terrain. The concrete
base houses two levels of parking. Stairwells link the various access levels.
The real ground floor is the upper level of the shopping zone. On the western
part of it, recessed slightly behind the smooth shell of the building, is the
entrance to a department store; to the north and separated from it is the access
to the residential levels from the fourth floor upward.

Building structure

The master plan designated a very deep volume of 27 × 55 meters for this hybrid
complex. A trapezoidal layout that is angled inward on both sides maximized the
natural light in the living spaces within the established perimeter. The volume
does not unfold vertically upward but rather tends toward the south and east and
widens as its height increases. The first and second floors were planned for the
sales area of a department store chain. The third floor houses its storage
areas. The top eight floors offer seventy-two rental apartments.

Facade

The volume is a twisted funnel shape, and in collaboration with the artist Adrian
Schiess its facades are immersed in orange, green, and light blue. The shell of
the facade is completely glass. The floors of the upper residential levels are
marked by bands at sill height, which suggests the vertical stacking of
different uses. The form of the building is traced on the residential floors by
glass balcony railings, whereas the window facades of the apartments are “bent
inward” and thus form triangular areas for the balconies. The angled surfaces of
the facade reflect the sky and the surroundings; the surfaces that are bent
inward also reflect the building itself and the nearby exterior. The immediate
urban surroundings thus become part of the visual perception of the
building.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.