The countryside of Northeast Groningen (NL) is radically and silently changing. Demographic shrinkage, digitalization in agriculture and the arise of new big typologies as windturbines, datacenters and mega farms are transforming the countryside of Groningen into a desolate production landscape.

The research is concerned how the landscape of Groningen can be translated into architectural form. Thereby the thesis learns from the landscape and explores context as a generating tool. At first the sea-clay landscape of Groningen is historically and geographically defined and second, more sensitively, examined for its architectural value. The open and wide landscape of Groningen is characterized by nature and the cultivation of man, especially in the last 200 years. Through time the threshold between the natural and unnatural blurred. This current presence of the cultivated landscape is explored in material, landscape, typology and atmosphere.

Resembling these new emerging big typologies the design brief consists of an agricultural research institute of 30 000 square meter, including a laboratory, farm and crops storage. The institute is placed in a typical large scale sea polder in the most northern part of Groningen.

Scale, position and movement play an inevitable role in the relation between the buildings and its surrounding landscape. In doing so the buildings are experienced big as small simultaneously, putting its scale in relation to the wide polder landscape.

The climatized crops storages are disconnected of their direct surroundings for an optimal storage climate. The paradox of this introvert arrangement is, that the outer facade can therefore be completely devoted to its surroundings; the landscape. Made completely out of natural reed the facade gives an ambiguous feeling to the highly engineered structure. An lazy arch in the facade interrupts the horizon, a constant sharp line in the wide ad open landscape that divides the sky from the soil.

Instead of conserving the old, the proposal embraces these new changes to enrich the existing qualities of the landscape. The proposal takes existing qualities as point of departure without disregarding the technical and efficient character of the new emerging typologies. By embracing the new typologies existing qualities of the landscape are emphasized and even amplified. In radically rethinking the countryside, the identity and experience of our rural areas is developed instead of forgotten.

When we design architecture we have to think very realistically because designs have to be implemented in the real world. Designing for science fiction worlds gives the designers more creative freedom. Because there is no limit of the real world we can come up with much crazier ideas than we normally would. This might not be applicable in the real world, but by setting our creative mind free we give ourselves the chance to come up with new and innovative design solutions. When we look at the design process of an architect and a production designer, the two design processes look quite similar. Though, there are some important differences between the two, especially when we look at the first part of the design process. This is because an architect starts with an actual location and actual users
he can refer to, while the production designer starts with a scenario which describes a narrative, characters and a fictive world. So how we can translate these stories into a design, without having any visual reference? The insights gained from this research I want to use in my design project, in which I will be designing a location from the novel ‘Ready player one’. This story is set in the year 2044, in both the real and virtual world.