Redesigning a Dutch polder

Abstract

With the rapid growth of metropolitans, the world’s population has increased dramatically. The basis of human life is food, and people’s quality of life is highly dependent on adequate and safe food. The relationship and balance between cities and agriculture have been a long-standing discussion. At the same time, emergencies such as climate crises and pandemics have accelerated food production insecurity and biodiversity degradation.
Flevoland marked a milestone in man’s “mastery of nature”, the ability to reclaim, of which the Dutch are proud. Almere is considered the most successful New Town not only in Flevoland Province but also in the Netherlands. The urban expansion of Almere is at a high speed and every phase is under precise planning and control by human. The geometric polder is widely referred to as Mondriaan-style. However, with the agriculture restructuring, the original intensive agriculture land is now facing new challenges. In addition, nature is usually trivialized here, but in reality, it is the true backbone and dominance of the land. Even in the process of reclamation, nature decides where to fill the earth and coordinates the relationship between land and water.
So the objective of the project is to leverage a nature-based solution taking the concept of biophilia to build up a food landscape infrastructure that connects urban agglomerations and the agriculture hinterlands, synergizing the historical anthropological heritage with the pioneer zeitgeist of Flevoland.
The project takes nature-based thinking as a research principle, while biophilic thinking as a core design principle. Under the framework of Urban Ecology and Eco-cities, the project explores how to integrate ecological or historical identity into a monoculture of agricultural land.
To melt four aspects of landscape reflection with the project, which are perception, process, palimpsest, and scale-continuum, the design site can be delayered as 3 main elements: agriculture, nature, and urban, synthesizing the past, present, and future on a local and site-specific scale.