Imagining the Dutch polder landscape: a design by OMA from 1986

In 1986, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) / Rem Koolhaas created-a landscape design for the Haarlemmermeerpolder, located between-Amsterdam, Leiden, and Haarlem. They were invited by urbanists and planners wanting to denounce the urban policy in the 1980s. Dutch spatial-development, - once characterized by reclamation and bold city planning, had come to a standstill. The possible urbanity of the Haarlemmermeerpolder-a unity based on differences and incongruences-can be considered the spatial and ideological blueprint behind that decade's more famous designs by OMA. While the project for the Haarlemmermeerpolder seems to present a modernization of agriculture, it is one of the few instances in which a past, present, and future image of the Dutch polder landscape was created. OMA reconciles the desire for ground-breaking and large-scale public projects with a diversified society, an immaterial economy, and a political system that seems to sabotage the possibility of a consciously created landscape.In 1986, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) / Rem Koolhaas created-a landscape design for the Haarlemmermeerpolder, located between-Amsterdam, Leiden, and Haarlem. They were invited by urbanists and planners wanting to denounce the urban policy in the 1980s. Dutch spatial-development, - once characterized by reclamation and bold city planning, had come to a standstill. The possible urbanity of the Haarlemmermeerpolder-a unity based on differences and incongruences-can be considered the spatial and ideological blueprint behind that decade's more famous designs by OMA. While the project for the Haarlemmermeerpolder seems to present a modernization of agriculture, it is one of the few instances in which a past, present, and future image of the Dutch polder landscape was created. OMA reconciles the desire for ground-breaking and large-scale public projects with a diversified society, an immaterial economy, and a political system that seems to sabotage the possibility of a consciously created landscape.A