Oosterwold is the product of a subtle intelligence in terms of planning, although you might struggle to see it.
Wandering around it is like being in an architectural safari park: next to a faux Tudor house with thatching, you might find a low rise US style 1950s bungalow. Behind them both you might see a series of Scandinavian looking wooden chalets that all look like they have been built by the same developer, or at least bought as prefabricated elements from the same place. Then there are a series of semi-industrial semi-agricultural vernacular sheds, which have had different types of timber cladding added to them to give them an individual character. Houses that look like B-movie UFOs from the 1950s or churches from the 1970s, all hugger mugger, all at random angles. It's a collage of forms, bewildering and slightly intoxicating.
Oosterwold was built on the Southern Flevoland polder, 370sq miles of land reclaimed from the IJsselmeer between 1959 to 1968 by the government of the Netherlands. Faced with difficulties in accommodating an expanding population in Amsterdam and strapped for land, the Dutch simply created more. On the polder they created new wilderness parks and farms. They also built the new town of Almere. The first house was finished there in 1976 and by 1984 it was a municipality. The town expanded during subsequent years, in orderly fashion, with terraced houses in rectilinear plots: orderly, comfortable and adjacent to all kinds of amenities, like schools and shops and medical centres, but slightly dull.
Initiated at the height of the Financial Crisis when housing providers had virtually stopped building, the Almere Poort development provided affordable housing for low-income households. Individuals purchased plots designated by the local authority. Once the plot was secured and a mortgage was in place, the buyer could choose from a series of ready-made homes, some designed by in-house architects. It worked well.
'In fact one of the strangest things about the unplanned Oosterwold is quite how much planning has gone into it'
But planners and architects in the Netherlands soon realised they could take it a step further. At Oosterwold, residents buy agricultural land and develop roads, water management, utilities and public spaces themselves in collaboration with neighbors. At least 50% of each plot must be used for urban agriculture and only up to 12.5% built-up area on each parcel is allowed, creating a place that will become more verdant as it grows.
In fact one of the strangest things about the unplanned Oosterwold is quite how much planning has gone into it. In 2012, the Dutch practice MVRDV worked with the municipality of Almere and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency: the town being viewed as an act of entrepreneurship rather than simple home making. They presented Oosterwold as a development strategy. Building often requires a permit for activity related to the environment, as well as a water permit and a building notification, but it doesn’t require a traditional construction permit. In 2015, plots in Oosterwold were offered for sale to private initiators, allowing residents to buy raw agricultural land with the requirement to build and develop infrastructure themselves. The first pioneers began settling in the following year, building homes and beginning urban agriculture.
What made the project work was an understanding of the market. The Netherlands was full of homebuilding lifestylists inspired by TV shows like Grand Designs, as well as young architects or interior designers desperate to apply their work to a real life project. Freedom might seem to be the main selling point, but with freedom comes responsibility. This cadre of youthful idealists has reconciled its dreams of autonomy with meetings about composting toilets and different kinds of permits. Oosterwold offers a rare opportunity for the most dynamic members of a generation, stymied by expensive credit and a lack of housing built by professionals, to take action. It stirs the soul to see them build their own wooden teepee with a matching greenhouse.
Certainly, those that have built here generally had a choice to do so. Oosterwold didn’t replace the historical need for affordable, public housing, but by giving people who wanted to test and express themselves the chance to develop their own plot, and all the necessary components around it, they inverted the usual relationship between governmental authorities and the public. Self-builders at Oosterwold also contributed to the development of their neighbourhood, their part of town: all by entering into an extraordinary experiment in organised anarchy.