Twenty-five years after construction started on the city of Almere, Rem Koolhaas retroactively designed a new city center, known as Dutchtown.  This revision is illustrative of the unpredictability of urban development, particularly for changes in the Randstad (conurbation of Western Holland) as a spatial reflection of an “un-clotted” to a “re-clotted” society.  Instead of a peaceful suburbia of 50,000 inhabitants, in which the middle class could live in houses with gardens, Almere developed into an archipelago of 200,000 people with ethnically dominated neighborhoods and streets with prostitution.  In this way, the city became an inseperable part of the hierarchic Randstad, from “bundled- de-concentration” to “carpet” metropolis, a patchwork of identies.
-Kees Christiaanse, Curator 4th IABR

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Almere’s new city center are the striated, or stacked, public spaces.  If new cities are said to lack the layers of existing cities, then this design is a literal response to that prevailing critique.  I can’t help but wonder if any of these layered sections subconsciously or consciously derived from Eastern models (esp. those from outside of Hong Kong).  Perceptions of the new city’s success fluctuate substantially…depending on who you ask.  What shouldn’t be neglected; however, is that this city’s destiny/fate is being dictated by a 20 year plan.  (Projections = Almere 2030 Plan)

Almere 2030 Model at the International New Town Institute

Almere housing block competition model, MVRDV, Rotterdam

A discussion with Marit Geluk of the International New Town Institute based in Almere was instrumental for understanding the social and economic forces that have spawned the need for this new city….in the Netherlands where land is very scarce.  Cities in the south of Holland are shrinking, yet Almere is growing.  This is basically based on a policy decision from existing cities like Amsterdam which are not willing/or are unable to expand at a rate and scale that would accommodate this rural to urban migration.  (The number one case for the creation of new cities.)  Existing cities are concerned with density thresholds, historic height limits, infrastructural capacities, and unemployment numbers.  And according to Geluk, trends in the Netherlands are changing.  The current population is moving out of their parents’ houses earlier than previous generations.

Willemieke Hornis, PHD candidate, Spatial Planning and Development, helped differentiate the new city of Almere from other large developments, specifically Leidsche Rijn – the largest urban development in the Netherlands, just outside of Utrecht.  While Almere is an example of “bundled concentration,”  Leidsche Rijn is a model of a “compact city.”  I owe you a diagram for this one, but it will have to come later.  In conclusion, Almere is a new city (independent politically and otherwise), LR is a dependent growth/parasite of Utrecht.

Leidsche Rijn (2 images)

While I ask the question, How do you create functional public space in new cities, I am continuously amazed by the amount of new public space happening/being re-appropriated in their nearby, existing city counterparts.  A group from the 4th Annual Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam is attempting to categorize, map, and define public space around the world via interactive web interface.  (Open Places)  While this monumental task has just begun, it represents the trend of awareness and intervention that cities around the world are taking on.  It is the time to move beyond the public think-tanks, dialogues, and conferences on what should be done to revitalize and renew cities and act to realize concrete examples.  The relationships among public space and public buildings can create the openness and co-exhistance that cities seek.  The newest cities have the opportunity to reinvent those relationships.

SAQ’s Cityscape project in Brussels

Shepard Fairey’s crew installing semi-legal art outside of Amsterdam’s Centraal Station

Talked to UNstudio about their latest pavilion designs in NYC and Chicago.  Hopefully will check out the Burnham Memorial Pavilion at the end of October.

“These conceptual designs or these installations, they are dealing with tests and they form a laboratorium for the rest of the work….ideas that can be later used in the (a)  building” – Ben Van Berkel, UNstudio Documentary part 1

Speaking of Expos, Check out BIG’s latest TED talk (Cities Past and Future) for a compelling presentation on the Danish pavilion design for China’s 2010 Expo (an intriguing example of a fusion of public architecture and public space) and an interesting comparison of Copenhagen and Shanghai.

And, finally, the 4th International Architecture Bienniale opened in Rotterdam this past weekend.   Full of temporary interventions and proposals for public spaces world-wide.  The summer school work was also included in the exhibit.

To me, the Dutch province, FLEVOLAND, sounds like an alternate reality.  It’s either the hidden world within the final level of an action-adventure video game, or the music video setting, record label, and debut album title of the next indie hip-hop superstar.

In this reality, it is a part of the Polder Landscape, land that was reclaimed from the sea around the beginning of the twentieth century (Flevoland was reclaimed around the 1950s and 60s).  Since then, it has become a home to several new cities.  Specifically, I’m interested in Almere.  The question this new city has been facing since it’s inception is: Is it possible to create an identity without a history?  The town created a competition (invites only) for a new town center in which innovation and experimentation were deliberately sought out/after.  After nearly a decade of meetings/briefs/revisions, Rem Koolhaas and OMA were declared the official master planners.  Their scheme called for an extremely image-able break with surrounding fabric, yet connections, links, and a rerouting of existing infrastructure and roads.  The scale of the new city center is substantially larger than the surrounding, existing urban fabric and it skews and twists the fine-grain grid of older Almere.  In comparison and most notably, the design separates pedestrian, bike, and automobile traffic and consists of a radically different (maybe even innovative) building stock.

I’m out to test the edges of the new city center and to face what skeptics and critics have deemed the faults: low levels of ground-level activity at some residential building sites, lack of open space planning, and an overall suburban retail-mall quality of life and feel.  I have seen the you tube home-videos of suburban teenage gangster rap wannabes ambling around the city center’s large plazas and the bright, people-free photographs of the new colorful housing typologies.  I wonder whether this place will be similar to Copenhagen’s Orestad or if it will “fail better” (as Zadie Smith says) because construction was completed before any economic crisis reared its ugly head.

I am anticipating a fruitful study in this ripe, new city atmosphere.  I am in contact with the International New Town Institute (based in Almere), but first, I’m going it alone.  I wonder which city – Amsterdam or Almere – will entertain a greater feeling of alternative reality.

The photos are from my initial, Saturday afternoon derive.

Singel-canal opposite Flowermarket (Bloemenmarkt)

Because of the Polder landscape and building on reclaimed land, and all the canals and water, and everything else that makes one’s experience in Amsterdam rather levitational, the theme for this month of Dutch water cities is [FLOATING].
Ex. 1
Ex. 2

Floating cities: often the only way to build them new.
Floating public spaces: new and informal appropriations every day.

Jan Gehl called Copenhagen’s watery public spaces “Aquatic City Space” and “Waterfront City Space” and described a number of activities that might occur in each place.  In comparison, Amsterdam seems rougher around the edges, more spontaneous, sporadic, condensed, overlapping, and unexpected.  Like Yes Duffy’s thesis card game, pick an activity, a location, and a group of people and mix-up this city.  Yesterday, I drew the haircut, on a boat, with 2 Australian nomads cards.  [FLOATING HAIRCUT]!

The act of float cut generated instant business (recruited boating tourists) by making a typically semi-private/private activity public.  It doesn’t hurt that it was refreshing (being doused in water in the heat of the summer) and at the peak of tourist season.

Copenhagen is modeling parts of its new development on Amsterdam, can it capture the true spirit of this place?  In more words, Serban said no.  I [insert photo with new haircut] tend to agree.

I arrived in Amsterdam via an easy and comfortable train ride.  It’s nice to capitalize on the convenient geography of central Europe.  Entry into the Netherlands marks the beginning of nearly a month of research (some of you are laughing) in Holland.  The major events planned for these next few weeks are 1. finally meeting up with my two fellow fellows and 2. participating in Rotterdam – Open City: the 5th International Architecture Summer School hosted by the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design.

I am fortunate enough to be able to meet up with the two other 2009 Branner Traveling Fellows, Nick Sowers “Military Atmospheres” and Taylor Medlin “RE:mote Controlled” while in Amsterdam and Den Haag.  Nick is studying the interface between military and civilian spaces and Taylor is investigating construction techniques used in sites of remote location..  While we are still finalizing plans and site visits, we are continuously discovering overlaps among our research and interests.  For example, I am discovering many new cities and public spaces are the sites of former military occupation and, of course, many bases and new cities are located in remote areas.  We were discussing the possibility of going to Sealand or other similar new city/military base propped on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean.  Slavecity, outside Rotterdam, might be another possibility.  Anyway, to hit this point home – the continuously overlapping Branner topics, see the point made by Jaap van Veen pre arrival into Noord Holland.  Let’s just say that he has been living and sailing in the Netherlands for a long time:

While I hardly know what Oerestad is about ,I wonder whether you are aware of historic dimensions.  I wondered about this rather empty plain so close to Kopenhagen, until I learned it used to be a practicing area for Danish army artillery until I suppose somewhere in the 1930′s. (Amager Faelled).  I hope you visited Christiana, also a former defense structure (army connected to nearby ex-naval base Holmene).  These structures seem to have liberated themselves by the help of a mix of entrepreneurs and squatters without assistance of official city planners.  Amager Faelled lacked buildings to squat So it has decades later been commissioned to official architects, of which you are in danger of becoming one. While in London ,Copenhagen and Stockholm, 17th century navy sites long have left governmental wings, in Amsterdam we still have this curious “Marine Etablissement” that has no naval function, but is used by central government to house riot police, provide helicopters with unpopular foreign heads of state with a discrete landing place; well beyond the jurisdiction of the city council.  It would be nice if someone like you noted these anomalies – the place could be better used, relieve inner city Amsterdam from some problems, etc.  For example, it would be an ideal international bus station to ship passengers into roundtrip-boats.