Customer Reviews

Dutchtown: A City Center Design by OMA/Rem

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Almere is practically unknown outside Holland, even among architects and urban planners. Luckily this growing new town on a large polder near Amsterdam chose Rem Koolhaas and his OMA(Office for Metropolitan Architecture)to design its central core. That's practically a guarantee for international recognition. To present the plan to the English speaking world, the new book "Dutchtown"has just been published, and it's a (Dutch) treat: a concise overview of what Almere actually is, its place in urban planning in the Dutch context, and an introduction to OMA's ideas for a vital city center.

Almere as it is isn't at all unpleasant, particularly compared to America's unplanned suburban sprawl. It's low-rise but high-density, well-landscaped with abundant leisure facilities, and has an innovative network of bus-only roads that put every resident within a few hundred meters of public transit. Currently though it's still primarily a commuter's town, and lacks the central area a town expected to reach a population of 250,000 should have.

Ironically Koolhaas is known as an admirer of America's laissez-faire approach, (he particularly likes Atlanta's chaos)but that's completely foreign to the Dutch, who live in Europe's most crowded country and carefully plan every square inch of their territory. As a result, OMA and Koolhaas have developed a real plan for a real city center for a real Dutch town, so instead of some kind of "Delirious Almere", an integrated project is proposed that works with the already existing city instead of contradicting or negating it.

Perhaps the weakest part of "Dutchtown" though is explaining just what Almere's city center will be like when OMA's plans are realized. That section of the book consists of collages and colorful plexiglass models more for a science fiction movie set than a definite plan to implement. This is within character for Koolhaas, who often seems to avoid getting to the point in presenting his schemes: he's into concepts and the big picture more than what the end results will be, and he likes to make a splash and create a sensation. Hopefully though he will succeed, and "Dutchtown" will succeed in putting Almere on the map internationally. Americans in particular could relearn the art of making communities. Instead of learning from Las Vegas, perhaps we could learn a bit from Almere.