Garden in the Machine

Abstract

This project incorporates a wide range of cultural and historical references, using the archive footage of the construction of the Flevopolder, the Venetian polder landscape, Robert Smithson’s work on territories and mines and Roman mythology to construct a narrative about new towns, and new beginnings. Situated on the threshold between the machine landscape of industrial agriculture that is the Flevopolder, and the neo-liberal free-for-all development of Oosterwold, the project provides a communal space for the prospective agricultural communities around the site. The agricultural cooperative which would manage the project, would work together with a research institute experimenting with alternative methods of farming, and would form a council with representatives of the city, the institute and the forestry department to make decisions on the land use of the commons, and thus gaining agency. The project presents itself as an urban image in the countryside, and announcing itself as a new beginning of sorts, the start of a new history in which we are able to re-establish our relationship to the land. As the community works together with the city and the institution to practice and experiment with alternative forms of agriculture, there is an opportunity to undo the damage of modernised agriculture, introducing new minor rhythms into the landscape that make space for wild plants and animals.The building serves to represent thenatural histories of the territory, allowing the community to engage in a dialogue with the land, and being represented in their relationship to it.The first times of the city of Almere, and the fictions and histories of its territory can thus be understood in dialectic relationship, so that this project can indeed become a concrete utopia, and a new city, or at least a prototype of it.