Daniël van der Woude
Interiors Buildings Cities
Garden in the Machine
Almere is a new town on new land, without a ‘proper’ history, having always been framed in terms of the abstract needs of the Amsterdam metropole. The tabula rasa landscape constructed after clearing the wilderness of the new land accommodates industrial agriculture and houses the displaced communities of Amsterdam. Urban collectivity can only be experienced in relation to the metropole, while modern farming has had ruinous ecological effects. However, the new town's utopian nature allows for another new beginning. The project, a collective farm experimenting in alternative agriculture, is situated on the threshold between the agricultural expanse and the neoliberal development of Oosterwold, providing a communal space for the prospective (sub)urban farmers around the site. Utilising the figure of the barchessa as urban image and threshold between town and country, allows the community to engage in a dialogue with the land, and to be represented in their relationship to it.