Blue Heart by Claudia Bode

Blue Heart

Blue Heart Claudia Bode May 2015 Master of Architecture Thesis, MIT Ana Miljacki, Thesis Advisor

Acknowledgments Ana, thank you for your unending support and guidance, energy and wisdom. You helped make this thesis a truly educational experience. Thank you Joel, for always making time for me, and for always knowing what to say. To Rania, thank you for your energy, your optimism and your insights. Thank you to my amazing helpers: Alexis, Sam, Wenfei, Kenny, Kristina, Jinhui, Liz, Yang, Enas, Max, Grisha, Max, Lizzie (the cake counts), Tyler, Susanna, Namjoo, and last but certainly not least, Maya. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what I would have done without you. To Erin Schenck, thank you for making it possible for me to go to the Netherlands. To my parents, thank you for helping me get here in so many uncountable ways. And to Maren, thank you always.

Contents 06

New Natures and Landscape Myths

Green Heart 10

Prologue: Geographia/Chorographia Points/Lines/Layers

Maakbaarheid

Green Heart Crises

Construct with Water Defense Against Water/Living with Water Randstad + Green Heart Crisis: Dairy Industry Pressures Crisis: A Sinking Sponge The Resilience of Myth

Blue Heart 94

Strategy for a Blue Heart

116

A New Pastoral

152

Soggy Peat Polders De-Polder System Blue Heart Form New Monuments

Conclusions

Appendix 156 162

Bibliography Paintings

New Natures and Landscape Myths

We live in the “Anthropocene”. This term for our predicament was coined by Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen to refer to the fact that human beings are making an impact in the world on a previously unimaginable scale. The Anthropocene problematizes the idea of “Nature” as something which is no longer the virgin “Other”, but rather the product of multiple hybrid processes; the release of CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere, the giant whirlpools of plastic circling in the North Pacific, the cycles of de-forestation and re-forestation, genetically modified crops, the selective breeding of animals, or the melting of the ice caps are all but some of the ways in which humans are actively changing what was previously considered untouchable territory. In recognition of the impossibility of pinning down a true definition for “Nature”, Timothy Morton has described it as a “floating signifier” a “transcendental term in a material mask that stands at the end of a potentially infinite series of other terms that collapse into it” .”Nature” implies that which is given, original, good, the “norm”; as such it has become an ideology rather than a definition. Morton and others have proposed to do away with the concept altogether: for him, it is about “ecology without nature”, for Bruno Latour, things are not natural or unnatural but rather “continuously multiplying nature-culture hybrids” . The destruction of the simple binary between Nature and Culture has far-reaching ramifications at the scale

of the body/cyborg , the political (where depoliticized techno-managerialism enters the realm of biopolitics) and the architectural (where the building envelope becomes thinner and “subnatures” - to use David Gissen’s term - which include things like weeds, dust, and dirt, must suddenly be taken seriously). Contamination – with toxicity, dirt, radiation, concrete, weeds, smoke – is one frame through which to understand this breakdown of the concept of “Nature”. Building envelopes become dematerialized, animals are invited in (see R&Sie(n)’s Mosquito Bottleneck) , GM seeds escape into the biosphere. But the notion of contamination does not accurately describe the fact that landscapes have always been coproductions of nature, culture and technology. They have been contaminated from the beginning! The Dutch landscape may be one of the clearest examples of this hybridity. Nowhere in the Netherlands is such a thing as “wilderness” to be found; the entire country has been designed, planned, shaped and literally raised out of the sea. Its most important monuments are nothing more than dryearth production machines (windmills and dams); its “nature areas” are the result of technological failures; its political identity shaped by the processes of land reclamation. We may always have been modern, but the Netherlands has always been in the Anthropocene. The Dutch even have a word for the

infinite malleability of their landscape – maakbaarheid (makeability) – and a phrase: “God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland”. Even if the concept of “nature” is dismantled, the notion of “ecology” (arguably) remains, and with it a long list of words that describe the ways in which it is deployed: system, process, soft, infrastructure, network, cybernetic, indeterminate, adaptive ….What is ecology if nature no longer exists? It is an approach, a strategy that smells of science even when the issues at hand are far larger than the system can handle. In “The Order of Things”, Foucault defined the Classical episteme as one of resemblance: to know was to represent, and to represent was to know. This mix-up between similitude and causality is still present ; we often confuse a complex system with a “correct” system and allow the veneer of scientism to convince us. A danger of the ideology of ecology is, as Erik Swyndegouw and Slavoj Zizek put it, its potential to lead to post-political sustainability politics where “ideological or dissensual contestation and struggles are replaced by techno-managerial planning, expert management and administration” . Instead of choosing politically between “this” or “that” nature, post-politics frames the crisis of nature as something which can be fixed through neutral, expert scientific opinion. The “enemy” always vague, outside of capitalism, and constantly there. As a result of this culture of

fear, techno-managerial politics become biopolitics, whereby the “regulation of the security and welfare of human lives is the primary goal”. In the Netherlands, planning has been depoliticized for many years , something that is most often celebrated as a triumph of long-term thinking over short-term political cycles. There is truth to this sentiment; indeed, the Dutch would not have accomplished many of their feats of engineering if their politics had gotten in the way of their planning. But in the face of rising sea levels, increasing river discharges, subsidence, and groundwater salinization, the Dutch approach to sustainability veers significantly into techno-managerialism, where a disconnected population is steered by experts into the “correct” direction . The familiar “nirvana image” of a perfectly safe, dry Netherlands dominates all decisions, at times short-circuiting the political process. Perhaps the solution is not to dismantle ecology or its associated processes, but to accept that the “solution” is not one but many, and that human beings make political choices that result in a particular kind of nature being constructed – wet, dry, green, blue, vegetated, barren, flat, hilly, toxic… Even if “Nature” is dismantled as a conceptual framework, it continues to exist in the semiotic register through the many objects we associate with it and the myths we create about it. The Dutch countryside

is a deeply technological and completely planned landscape – but it holds a significance as the “pastoral Other”. The dominant objects in these landscapes – cows, barns, windmills, grass, and linear ditches arranged in an open, flat scene – have come to signify a particular kind of Nature – the pastoral – that continues to play a significant role in Dutch politics and planning as the void that balances the growing metropolis. The sanctity of the pastoral has led to decades of planning policies that strictly preserve agricultural land and restrict any other use. The role of the signifier in the construction of a mythical Nature brings objects rather than fields or systems into play; the image of the individual barn or windmill can bring with it a significance that transcends ecology, and has great power to shape political outcomes. The object (and all of its cultural baggage) is a refreshing turn from purely systematic approaches to the construction of landscapes, but even here things are not black and white. When is a windmill no longer a “windmill”? The huge popular anger towards to construction of modern windmills (for wind energy) in many countries would seem to suggest that there is a certain something that has been lost – even if both types are just variations of the same kind of machine. One has lost its cultural significance, the other’s has been mythologized. But the truth is that these mythologized, “traditional”

landscapes have always been undergoing a constant process of change and adaptation. The windmill was, after all, once a brand-new invention. It was not long ago that the Dutch polder landscape was not considered “beautiful”, and even the cow is a relatively new arrival . We live in a world of flexible signifiers and our myths absorb new forms, new technologies, new types. Even if we operate on the assumption that Nature does not exist and that Ecology is ideological, the physical world is there in front of us and it is changing quickly. Climate change, globalization, the inconceivably fast growth of digital technologies…these phenomena demand action: the construction of new natures, new collectives, new assemblages. But what happens when they must be built within old myths? Where is the limit of a landscape’s semiological resilience? Here, the ideology of ecology (and systems, and infrastructure, and the network…) comes up against the object, wrapped up in all of its myths, stories, associations, meanings, cultural baggage. If all of the signifiers for nature are gone, can it still be called nature? In the Netherlands, the myth of the pastoral has a powerful political significance; as the void in the center of the city, it allows the city to exist. That same landscape is on the brink of radical change as the forces of climate change and globalization are unleashed. What are the constructed natures (at the landscape and at the architecture scale) that address these pressures while accepting the importance of myth?

Green Heart

Prologue: Geographia/Chorographia

01_Points/Lines/Layers

MVRDV

For the Expo 2000 in Hamburg, the Rotterdam architecture firm MVRDV created a Netherlands pavilion that described the Dutch landscape quite literally: a layering of different materials, natures, technologies and experiences, stacked together unceremoniously to save space with little concern for the “real” versus the “artificial”. The pavilion celebrated the artificiality of the Dutch landscape, and also the spatial opportunities inherent in the stacking, layering, overlapping of systems. This systemic layering, sometimes called the “layer cake” model, is a basic way to understand the Dutch landscape: water and earth, infrastructure, and occupation layers working (ideally) as symbiotically

and as efficiently as possible. It can happen here because the Netherlands is so small, and its water and planning issues are so large. Very high density, a very high risk of flooding, and a wealthy economy allow the Dutch to simply construct their own land in an inhospitable context. The overlapping of complex systems and the pressure to save space has produced many unique places in the Netherlands, as well as creative ways to continuously redefine what space is used for. These spaces and places can be described systematically, but they are also points, forms, elements. The relationship between the point and the line, the layer cake and the place is a basic question in this thesis and can also be understood in the tension between geographia and chorographia. In his Geographia (2nd century CE), Ptolemy defined geography as the study of the entire world, but chorography as the study of its smaller parts—provinces, regions, cities, or ports. Its goal was “an impression of a part, as when one makes an image of just an ear or an eye”; and it dealt with “the qualities rather than the quantities of the things that it sets down”. In other words, chorography allows us to understand the places, the experiences, in a way that a mapping does not. Golden Age Dutch paintings have been referred to as

“mapped images” for the ways in which they “describe” the world around them exactly as it is – in contrast to, for example, Italian paintings which elevated religious iconography or imaginary scenes above a description of the real world. This tendency in Dutch painting allows us to understand the Dutch image as a sort of snapshot, a postcard, that inserts us into a moment within a system. The image is chorographic in its communication of the qualities of a space, even while the subject matter is often quite “geographic”. Modern images of the Netherlands can also be understood as links between the geographic and the chorographic, highlighting, in effect, the spatial qualities of systems. Achieving an abstract, diagrammatic understanding of the ways in which water, infrastructure and occupation interact in the Dutch landscape does nothing at the scale of the person, at the level of experience. What do the Deltaworks feel like to the touch? What does the geometry of a single ditch have to say about the history of Dutch landscape reclamation and trade networks? How does a piece of technology (the pump) become a national icon (the windmill)? In other words: how can the layers of the cake be understood through its experiences, moments, forms?

Defend (with water)

Large expanses of the Dutch landscape are in fact engineered inundation plains dotted with forts; faced with an advancing enemy, leaders could turn the massive Dutch water control system into a defensive strategy by flooding fields with enough water to deter advancing armies. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Water defense linesâ&#x20AC;? existed at various times around Amsterdam and from Naarden south to Dordrecht, and were maintained until the invention of airplanes made them ineffective. These large networks of defensive hydrology gave rise to an architectural typology: the fortified city, surrounded by water. The best-preserved of these is Naarden, at the northernmost tip of the New Dutch Water Defense Line.

Defend (against water)

The Delta Works are equally massive defensive infrastructures â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but they protect against water, rather than with it. After a devastating 1953 flood, the central Dutch government elected to essentially close off the delta region from the sea, constructing massive sea walls, barriers and gates. In the process, the ecology of the region was fundamentally altered.

MAROONED

VISITOR

INFRASTRUCTURAL

DETRITUS

BARRIER

OYSTER

SLIDE

MEMORIAL

Absorb

POLDERSLOOT

POLDER

DIKE

The central Randstad region between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht acts as a giant sponge, absorbing and storing water in a boezem system that is connected to an extremely complex network of ditches, canals, sluices, pumps, and waterways. When floods threaten, this system expands to absorb excess water, keeping it from entering towns and cities. In times of drought, the system releases water back into fields, helping to keep salinity at bay and keep the peatlands moist (because peat oxidizes as it dries, leading to subsidence and ever-greater flood risk). The feedback loop between this system and its effects (subsidence, for instance) can be seen at the scale of individual farm plots and ditches.

BOEZEM

Pump

Pumps created modern Holland. Windmills allowed lakes to be drained and peatlands to stay dry as they subsided; nineteenth century steam pumps and modern electrical pumps allowed cities to grow, keep citizens dry, and allow for farming and dairy production. The pump, appropriately enough, is a recognizable icon of Holland (in the form of the windmill) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but its role as the literal shaper of the country is less well known.

Border

Hollandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complicated relationship with water extends to its coasts. The Holland Arc, a continuous stretch of beach that begins at the Hook of Holland and terminates near the Wadden Sea, is used heavily for recreation by the inhabitants of the densely settled Randstad. But the beach, and the dunes behind it, also have a critical role to play in protecting the lowlands from storm surges and rising sea levels.

WADDEN SEA

NORTH

RO TT

TA EL

AR C

HOLLA

ND AR C

Move/Grow

The Dutch trading economy grew around water networks, as early merchants traveled via barge from town to town. Now, the port of Rotterdam has a critical role to play in international trade and shipping, and areas of land are set aside for growing plants (in greenhouses and otherwise) which are then transported via international trading networks, both water-based and through trucking and rail.

Breathe

The counterpoint to the dense ring of cities called the Randstad is the void in the center, an area filled with small dairy farms, windmills, and picturesque towns. The Green Heart is pastoral, green, open – and constructed. Windmills and farms act as signifiers for a romanticized Dutch Golden Age, medieval ditches and canals mark the ground, but the Green Heart is also crisscrossed with trains, highways, electricity poles, and threats of encroaching suburbia. It is part of the Randstad, but simultaneously its antithesis – a constructed urban park, perceived to be “nature”.

Maakbaarheid

01_Construct with Water

“Holland” is commonly understood to be synonymous with “The Netherlands”, but in fact it refers to two highly urbanized provinces – South Holland and North Holland – which contain many of the country’s most important cities and historical landscapes. The region’s development has been unique because reflects an extraordinary degree of interdependence between the manipulation of landscapes and the development of urban form. This is due to the fact that the entire region was once a marshy delta which has been reclaimed and reshaped over the centuries; the development of Dutch cities was originally simply an extension of this process. The various water management and pumping technologies developed over the centuries had a significant impact on the evolution of Dutch urbanism, to the extent that it is possible to talk about the evolution of landscapes, technologies and cities as a symbiotic triad rather than as separate entities. The original inhabitants of the Dutch lowlands settled on terps, or higher areas that were surrounded by marshy peatlands and peat streams . At this time the river flows within the Rhine-Meuse delta were uninterrupted and supplied the area with enough sediment to remain above sea level; the fact that the peat was kept wet also kept it from oxidizing and

disappearing. Settlements that became cities such as Amsterdam or Dordrecht began as clusters of buildings on terps or along river embankments and gradually expanded as land was reclaimed. In the early medieval period, the various Counts and Dukes of the region competed with each other to reclaim land, leading to the large-scale subdivision of the marshy landscape into “polders”, or areas of reclaimed land surrounded by a dike. The reclamation of land was a complex process that required a high level of cooperation; diverted water needed to be channeled down an appropriate path that did not flood a neighbor’s field, and the safety of all depended on the maintenance of all sections of the dikes. The dikes were not initially needed, but as original settlers drained sections of marsh into the rivers, the newly dry peatland oxidized and evaporated, leading to the gradual subsidence of the reclaimed landscape that continues today. When the water level of the river was higher than that of the reclaimed land, it became necessary to build dikes in order to keep water from flooding back into fields. At this point the direction of drainage was reversed and water was diverted into “weterings”, or channels that were perpendicular to the river. These weterings fed into “boezems”, or intermediate water storage sites, from

which the water was allowed to drain into the “outer water” (rivers or oceans) . This complex system of drainage was overseen by regional “water boards”, or administrative bodies that ensured that the system was maintained for the safety of all. The democratic system of negotiation that ensured that the dikes and ditches were maintained became to be called the “polder system”, and is a model of governance that continues into modern-day Dutch governance (as do the water boards themselves). The cities that developed on this landscape of rivers, dikes and polders often began as extensions of a dam (Amsterdam) or dike (Dordrecht), or on a strategically placed waterway (Delft) . Their urban form was closely tied to the system of water drainage, and the historical cores of these cities still correspond to the original reclamation plots. The invention of the windmill (a pre-industrial water pump) around 1400 was a pivotal moment in the evolution of Dutch landscape and urbanism. Now larger areas of land could be kept dry even as the land continued to subside; rows of windmills could move water significant vertical distances. Important Dutch cities grew within their fortified walls, but retained an intrinsic connection to the system of water drainage

which kept them dry. In 1612 , a new typology of land reclamation was made possible as a result of the increased pumping power of windmills: the drained lake. The Beemster polder (now a World Heritage site) is an example of the highly designed drained lake polder typology. After building a ring dike around the lake, surrounded by a ring canal, the lake was drained using rows of windmills and canals arranged in a grid pattern that drained water into the ring canal on the outer side of the dike. The landscape design of the polder itself was highly specific and included farms on a grid punctuated by a town at the intersection of two major axes. Even the planting pattern along the main roads was specified . Following the Beemster polder, other lakes were drained, especially in the region north of Amsterdam. Their landscape and urban form can clearly be distinguished from the surrounding medieval “cope” reclamation pattern. Between 1800 and 1890, the invention of the steam-powered pump radically shifted the scale of reclamation efforts. The draining of the Haarlemermeer in 1850 was an enormous undertaking which was accomplished using only one steam powered pump and reflects the beginning

of a shift towards the decoupling of urbanism from physical geography. For the first time, there was enough pumping power to base the pattern of land reclamation on the design of cities, and not the other way around. The invention of the modern pump around 1890 allowed Dutch urbanism to proceed independently of Dutch water management , which in many cases led to a drastic reduction of surface water and water storage sites. Between 1890 and 1940, a prevailing trend was of “garden city” design, in which water was integrated in the city and partially connected to the existing system . In the postwar year until around 1970, postwar reconstruction and the doctrines of Modernism resulted in “neighborhood cities” of megastructures in which the new water system was completely separated from existing reclamation patterns . Between 1970 and 1990, “cauliflower cities” were built in places like Almere (a new city in the brand-new Flevoland, a polder reclaimed from the Ijsselmeer) . Beginning around 1990, it became increasingly clear that it was a folly to ignore the importance of water in urban design. Several near-flood-disasters made it clear that the gradual reduction of surface water storage

sites in the Netherlands was a huge risk to cities; and that dikes could not be raised indefinitely as sea level rose, the volume of water in rivers increased, and land subsided. The change in philosophy was reflected in a turn towards “water cities”, in which new suburbs were planned to incorporate large amounts of water, even going so far to experiment with floating or amphibious buildings . Despite the new emphasis on water, however, the trend was still to start from scratch: the existing (often medieval) system of ditches and canals was completely redesigned to fit into new urban design ideas. The reintroduction of physical geography into urban design was only partial. Many of the new “water cities” built after 1990 were built as VINEX locations. VINEX (“Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra”, which translates as Fourth Memorandum Spatial Planning Extra), is a policy briefing note of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (Ministry of VROM) released in 1988 that set aside new areas of land outside of major cities for new development . Aside from their new focus on water, VINEX development are significant because they stipulate a policy of “decentralized concentration” that follows a Dutch tradition of drawing strict lines between city and country.

Peat Bog

The Rhine-Meuse Delta before around the year 1000 was a marshy peat bog, punctuated by mounds (terps) and many streams. (Image from Encyclopedia Britannica)

Ditches and canals

Peat polder reclamation patterns

Reclamation

DIKE n.

The precesses of land reclamation in the Holland region of the Netherlands can be divided into broad two types: medieval peat polder reclamation and drained lake reclamaton. The first has created the landscape pattern seen on this page and is a product of small, scale, gradual changes in drainage. Over the course of centuries, these shifts led to significant subsidence of oxidizing peat and the need for continuous water management to avoid flooding. The landscape can be understood as a hierarchy of ditches and canals that divert water from fields and larger “outer” waterways, with continuous pumping necessary. A “waard” is a collection of zones with individually controlled water levels, or polders.

Earthen water barrier.

OUTER WATER n.

BOEZEM n. Water storage between polder level and outer water

Oceans and rivers.

DRAINAGE DITCHES n.

pl.

Drained lake polders, on the other hand, are designed and executed as part of a master plan that involves several steps. The first drained lake polders were created in the 16th century using windmills, but beginning in the 19th century lakes were drained using steam or electrical power. These polders are less prone to subsidence because of the lack of peat in the ground, and they are carefully planned, often with regular grids of streets, canals, and farmhouses, with a small village located on a major axis.

KADIJK n. WETERING n. POLDER n.

Hydrological unit of drained land

DRAINED LAKE POLDERS n.

pl. 16th-20th c. pl. Medieval. WAARD n. Collection of peat polder units. PEAT POLDERS n.

Urbanized dike/canal.

Intermediate drainage canal.

Original river

Ditches drain to river

Land subsides; drainage reverses, river dike is built

Circulation along wetering and dike, leaving parallel ditches to subside further

Peat Polders (medieval cope reclamation)

Lakebed Polders (mechanically drained lakes)

Original lake

Ring canal is constructed the entire way around the lake and connected to existing drainage

Ring dike and canal

Ring dike is constructed between lake and canal

Drainage canals and pumps

Secondary ditches

Windmils or pumps move water from the lake to the canal using new planned interior canals, leaving a dry lakebed

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Urbanâ&#x20AC;? design of farmhouses and village along canals

Rural Settlement Patterns on Reclaimed Land

Various processes of reclamation led to a variety of settlement patterns that follow the logic of water management. Settlement in the medieval peat polders is linear and follows a major kadijk, with very long, thin plots stretching behind farmhouses to the next wetering, separated by ditches. At points along these lines of houses, small villages can be found that contain public buildings like the church. Due to subsidence, the plots of land behind the farmhouses are not well suited for crop growing and are now mainly used for grazing. Drained lake polders are marked by a ring canal and ring dike, and are organized internally by orderly, gridded canals. Urban centers were planned at the intersection of major axes; some polders, like the Beemster, can be understood as examples of comprehensive â&#x20AC;&#x153;urbanâ&#x20AC;? design. Other drained lake polders, like the Haarlemmermeer, contain less of this original planning vision as changing technologies have allowed new needs and suburban sprawl to adjust their form.

Zoetermeer

Beemster Lakebed Polders (drained lake reclamation)

Around Woerden

Krimpenerwaard Peat Polders (cope reclamation)

River Settlement

Many Dutch cities began as river settlements that formed around a dike or a dam, or on an embankment. Over time, this original structure was absorbed into the city as it grew; this can be seen in Amsterdam, where Dam Square marks the original water control structure, and in Dordrecht where the dike is integrated into a line of buildings. Because medieval Dutch trading networks were based on water transport, these river cities became crucial links in the economic development of the region.

Dike cities

High ground cities

Dam cities

Embankment cities

Amsterdam (dam city)

Dordrecht (dike city)

Technologies and Cities: an Evolving Relationship with Water Terp

This is an artificial landscape constructed and maintained through technology. Nothing about the Netherlands is passive: without constant pumping, it would slow fill with water from below. From the very beginning, human habitation in the Netherlands has been dependent on technology that began with simple techniques to move earth, and continued with inceasingly sophisticated strategies to move water in large quantities. The windmill, an icon of Dutch culture, is in reality the technological workhorse that allowed cities and towns to flourish. As technologies became more and more sophisticated, Dutch cities became more and more disconnected from the technologies that allowed them to stay dry. Whereas medieval cities like Amsterdam or Dordrecht could almost be understood as extensions of a technology (a dam or a dike), in the twentieth century it became possible for the first time to imagine new kinds of cities that were decoupled from the needs of water mangement. Modern pumps emancipated urban planners from water.

Dike

Windmill

Steam Pump

In recent years, water has made a comeback as planners realize the folly of assuming that water management can proceed independently of urban form. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Water citiesâ&#x20AC;?, once again, introduce urban form itself as a kind of water management technology.

Modern Pump

Until 1500: Terp mounds and dikes

Political context: Survival

Site preparation: mound, dike

Urbanism is physical geography

Mound, dune, river cities

Technology

Dordrecht

Cope reclamation

City

Water

Streets/ Buildings

1500-1800: Windmills

1500-1890: Steam pumps

Political context: land of cities

Political context: constitution

Site preparation: encircling canal and mud

Site preparation: lowering the groudwater table, sand

Urbanism follows physical geography

Urbanism influences physical geography

Boezem, polder, fortification cities

Polder city

Technology

Delft

City

Water

Streets/ Buildings

Haalemmermeer

1890-1940: Modern pumps

1940-1970: Modern pumps

Political context: welfare state

Site preparation: layer of sand with connections to the existing system

Site preparation: layer of sand without connections to the existing system

Urbanism ignores physical geography Garden city

Urbanism ignores physical geography Neighborhood city

Technology

Rotterdam

Bijlmermeer

City

Water

Streets/ Buildings

1970-1990: Modern pumps

1990 - : Modern pumps

Political context: welfare state

Political context: globalization

Site preparation: partial layer of sand with connections to the existing system

Site preparation: partial filling

Urbanism ignores physical geography Cauliflower city

Urbanism reintroduces physical geography Water city

Technology

Almere

City

Water

Streets/ Buildings

Ypenburg

02_Defense Against Water/Living with Water

For centuries, the Dutch attitude towards excess water was to get rid of it as fast as possible. When land subsided or storm surges threatened, the response was to raise dikes and build hard infrastructure in order to keep the water out, and to continuously increase pumping power. In 1953, a catastrophic flood wiped out many of the dikes in the delta region south of Rotterdam, killing 1800 people and destroying entire towns; the response from the government was to propose one of the largest and most ambitious engineering projects ever seen . The Deltaworks were a series of storm surge barriers and dams that effectively closed off the sea from the delta region with the exception of the Western Scheldt (to allow access to Antwerp). The closing of the Zuiderzee from the North Sea created a huge freshwater lake (the Ijsselmeer) within which gigantic new polders were reclaimed. For the most part, the Deltaworks infrastructures form a hard line against the sea that is effective in protecting against storm surges, but they also destroyed countless acres of natural estuarine habitat. Due to protests by conservationists and others, the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier was constructed as an innovative “closeable barrier” that under normal circumstances allows ocean and freshwater to mix; during storms, however, it can close in order to protect inland towns. This barrier represents the beginning of a change in thinking about water management and flood defenses

that became more urgent after a near-catastrophic river flood in 1995. The dikes did not fail in that case, but the experience of near-disaster prompted many to reconsider the all-or-nothing policy of the “hard line”. As it became ever clearer that climate change was posing a real threat in the form of rising sea levels and higher river discharges, the official policy towards water began to shift towards adaptive management and increased flexibility with the goal of increasing resilience, in an acknowledgement that the extent of impacts from climate change were unknown . A result of this shift in policy was the creation of the Delta Commission, a governmental body that was established in 2008 in order to develop action plans for integrated, systemic water management that reflect this changed attitude. The Commission produced a “Delta Report” in 2008 in which it outlined a series of recommendations for landscape-scale changes that respond to predicted threats from water: the increasing salinization of the groundwater, increasing river discharges, increase in sea level, the need to raise the level of the Ijsselmeer in response to rising sea levels, the disappearance of mudflat ecosystems, and lack of water storage, among others . The proposed responses are large in scale but designed to be incremental and adaptable. An example of this shift in thinking is the Room for the River program , which identified a lack of space

for floodwater as a primary source of river flooding. Rather than raise dikes, the Room for the River projects reduced river obstructions, lowered dikes or moved them back, created new water channels and found ways to integrate floodplains into urban areas. The program was part of a larger campaign for “living with water”, the government’s attempt to shift cultural attitudes towards water so that projects like those in Room for the River would be accepted. Other projects like De Urbanisten’s Water Squares, or the Sand Engine along the Delfland coast, try to encourage new ways of thinking about water as they integrate soft and flexible infrastructure, including the idea of “building with nature”. The need to increase space for water is not limited to rivers. A critical part of the Dutch water system is the interconnected boezem system , which is the network of waterways that acts as Holland’s sponge: in times of flood, it absorbs water from the polders and holds it until it can be released into the ocean or the rivers. In times of drought, the boezem system releases water back into agricultural land. The constant flushing of the polders with freshwater is important in order to keep salinity at bay. However, due to the draining of many of Holland’s lakes, including the Haarlemermeer (which reduced the Rijnland boezem’s storage capacity by 80% ), the ability of the boezem system to absorb and store water has greatly decreased, even as climate change makes this task increasingly crucial.

Much of the western part of the Netherlands is below sea level, including the densely populated Randstad area. The ground in this region consists of peat, which disappears as it oxidizes, meaning that continuous pumping over the centuries has led to subsidence. Ironically, the highest points in much of the country are the rivers. It is a viscous circle: if the pumps stop the land will slowly fill with water from below, but it is this constant pumping that leads to subsidence in the first place.

A series of dike rings offer protection from the water, with protected areas rated by their flood risk. In the Randstad, extensive dikes offer high protection that compensates for the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vulnerable location. Since 1953, however, it has become clear that not all dikes meet the standard set by the government (red lines).

In light of climate change, the Delta Commission has predicted possible modifications to the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s water system that will be needed in the short and medium term. These include the strengthening and/or expansion of the coastline, dealing with the inreased intrusion of saltwater into the rivers, raising the level of the IJsselmeer to adjust to rising sea levels, and possibly opening the Eastern Scheldt to the ocean again. These possible large changes accompany a program of constant dike strengthening and reinforcing.

The Room for the River program specifically addresses the threat of flooding from rivers due to increased discharge, through a set of physical landscape modifications deployed at key points along the rivers. Depending on the scale of the modification, the program may require relocating or adjusting property or even entire urban areas (such as in Nijmegen).

This page: Deltaworks infrastructures Facing page: Delta Comission water management plan

Deltaworks locations

DUNE Dune

HOTEL 56

The Dutch attitude towards the coast shows the potential of softer infrastructure. Due to rising sea levels and greater likelihood of catastrophic storm surges, the dunes are an increasingly important barrier. Typically, dunes are strengthened through beach nourishment, wherein the government sprays sand (mined from the bottom of the North Sea) onto the beach, and allows the wind to carry it to the dunes. The Sand Engine represents a different philosophy. A mountain of sand is placed just off of the coast, forming a new recreational and ecological zone. The currents naturally disperse the sand along the beach as it disintegrates, eliminating the need for costly pumping. At the same time, the new, constantly shifting sand mountain creates new space and introduces people to the issues surounding coastal erosion.

SEA Sea

Beach

BEACH

Hotel

The Sand Engine: Precedent for Softer Infrastructure

Costal protection, Sand Engine observation tower

Transitioning to a New Inland Sogginess

After the catastrophic 1953 flood, the Dutch government committed to providing a basic level of flood protection for inhabitants of the Delta region south of Rotterdam. The resulting water control infrastructures - dams, barriers, and gates - effectively create a hard line the separates the ocean from rivers. This has protected inhabitants from storm surges, but at a cost: the destruction of much of the estuarine ecology, and a false sense of security that has allowed some to believe that the risk of flooding is a thing of the past. The Eastern Scheldt barrier, which preserves ecological value by allowing sea water and river water to mix in non-emergencies, was the first response to concerns that a hard line against water was not sustainable. In more recent times, the call for “softer” approaches has become more urgent as climate change-related water threats begin to shake assumptions of safety.

The Room for the River initiative exemplifies a new way of thinking about water in the Netherlands. Rather than always attempting to divert it away or build higher and higher dikes to contain flooding, these projects increase overall safety by giving the rivers more room to expand in times of flood. This requires more than civil engineering: it is in fact a significant paradigm shift, from of defense against the “Waterwolf ”, to one in which water is welcomed. Room for the River projects expand the ability for the landscape to temporarily store water, meaning that water is more visible and present in everyday life. The idea of “Living with Water” is in fact a way to fight against dangerous complacency about water safety (e.g. the dikes and the Deltaworks will save us) at a cultural level. Practically speaking, new urban and architectural typologies are being developed that accept the fact that the gound may not always be dry; an example is the construction of farmhouses on mounds in the Overdiepse Polder, which has become a large floodplain to be used in emergencies.

Existing: increased river discharge must be compensated for with more pumping

Room for the River: give the river more space to flood, increasing boezem capacity and lessening risk of catastrophic failure

New architectural typologies for a soggier landscape: farmhouses built on mounds

Hard line: Brouwersdam (Deltaworks)

POLDER

DIKE

POLDERSLOOT

BOEZEM

Peat polder landscape grammar

Green Heart: A Concept in Crisis

01_Randstad + Green Heart

“The Randstad” is a term that was invented in the 1930s by the then-director of KLM Airlines, Albert Plesman, who was trying to convince the Ministry of the Interior to build one national airport instead of three local airports. At that point the idea of one interconnected city was a stretch of the imagination, because the major Dutch cities were still quite separated from each other; however, in the next decades Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht did become significantly interlinked. Randstad literally means “edge city”, and the term is a conceptual sleight of hand that allows this interconnectedness to happen without allowing the region to turn into a megalopolis, something that the Dutch have always viewed as a significant threat to their small country. The solution to the problem of potentially uncontrolled sprawl was the Green Heart: the Randstad’s other half and the thing around which it is allowed to grow. It, too, is a political construction. Its roots lie in fear: as soon as urbanization began to

Areas protected from flooding by the major Dike Rings

threaten agricultural landscapes, they became worthy of protection and gained cultural and aesthetic value. Man-made landscapes, which were now under threat, also deserved protection. It was admitted that there were no purely natural landscapes left in the Netherlands, every area being subjected to human influence. There was only a differentiation in the intensity of cultivation. In this context the term natural value gained relevance, especially in the 1970s. This category combined scientific elements such as authenticity, diversity and rarity, with attention for recreation and non-professional perceptions of nature and landscape. This softened the boundary between nature and culture.

As a result of shifts in the technologies of land reclamation, the Randstad consists of multiple cities that radiate outward from their historical cores in an approximation of the technologies that were used to build them; at their outer fringes are the various VINEX housing locations. The Green Heart is comprised of largely medieval peat polders with areas that have been reclaimed from lakes; the peat polders are quickly subsiding, and as a result of the sometimes extreme levels of subsidence and high water table, large areas are devoted exclusively to dairy farming (since the ground is too wet to grow crops). It is spotted with small towns and crisscrossed by highways and train tracks.

The identity of the Green Heart is intimately linked with the identity of the Randstad: when the political climate favors an integrated Randstad, it favors an integrated Green Heart. When the political winds blow towards diversification, the Green Heart also becomes less unified. The more the Randstad grows, the more valuable the Green Heart becomes.

The Green Heart serves as a constant reminder of the “Other”; wherever you are in the Randstad, you are never far away from the mythologized Dutch Nature of ditches, windmills and cows. The images that come to mind are those created by 17th century artists who painted strikingly accurate, almost photographic depictions of this landscape, succeeding in creating

Amsterdam

The Hague Utrecht

Rotterdam

Randstad

a mythologized image of the Dutch pastoral Nature that continues to hold sway today. A google search of “Dutch landscape” will return many of the same idealized images that were recorded by Dutch painters four centuries ago, marked by the same architectural typologies: windmills (water pumps), barns, farmhouses, ditches, bridges, and cows.

Urban

The VINEX policy and the establishment of strict boundaries for the Green Heart happened roughly simultaneously, meaning that the VINEX housing developments could be said to establish the “frontier” of the pastoral. But since 1990, the real estate market in the Netherlands has been liberalized significantly, as the government steps away from housing and private investors play a much larger role. These recent political changes have resulted in more sprawl within the Green Heart, especially in strips along highways. But just as the Green Heart was invented when it seemed that the agriculture was threatened, the prospect of sprawl is again making this landscape more precious. In Holland, the thought that the pastoral is near is that which allows the urban to exist. VINEX Buffer

Green Heart

Dordrecht (dike city)

Urbanization

VINEX Buffer Zones

Rail and Highways

Water and Rijnland Boezem System

Defensive Water Line Inundation Fields and Forts

Pumps and Windmills

Natura2000 Protected Areas

Dike Rings and Navigable Waterways

Randstad-area Polders and Rijnland Boezem System

Peat Polder Strip Urbanization and Villages

02_Crisis: Dairy Industry Pressures

The Green Heart contains many medieval peat polders that are entirely devoted to dairy production; the reason is that due to extreme subsidence it is too wet to grow anything except grass. (In some areas the groundwater level is only 40cm below the ground, and many plots are effectively floating). As a result, areas like the Alblasserwaard and Krimpenerwaard are filled with small family dairy farms and cheesemaking operations. The cows that roam the flat green landscape are an important part of the aforementioned pastoral image of the Green Heart, and, although farms have consolidated significantly in the last halfcentury, the average size of a farm in many regions remains quite small (24 ha or less than 50 cows in the Krimpenerwaard). One reason that these family farms have been able to survive is due to an EU milk quota established in 1984 , which artificially limited the amount of milk able to be sold on the market and allowed small producers to compete. However, the quota was lifted in April 2015,

In 2015 the EU eliminated milk quotas, meaning that small Dutch family farms must now compete on the global market to sell their dairy products.

meaning that dairy products from Europe are entering the global market, effectively making it significantly harder for small producers to stay operational as demand from places like China skyrockets. An option for family farms is to leave farming, selling their land to large companies or developers. Another is to establish cooperatives that allow multiple family farms to combine resources in order to compete with larger companies. Or, incomes can be diversified by adding tourism or recreational facilities to their farms, producing non-dairy products, or taking payments from the government for maintaining ecological health and biodiversity. Farmers in the Peat Meadows of the Green Heart have much to gain by returning to the kind of more multifunctional activity that was commonplace before farming became a market-based activity. Particularly in the Green Heart, there exist many possibilities for synergies between farmers and the urban areas that surround them, especially if â&#x20AC;&#x153;landscape valueâ&#x20AC;?

(read: pastoral mythologies) is considered to be a real monetize able element. The addition of water into the landscape is difficult for dairy farmingâ&#x20AC;Śbut perhaps not for other income-generating activities as farmers turn into countryside entrepreneurs. The local or provincial governments of various regions of Holland have understood that a massive scaling-up of dairy operations in the Green Heart would have a huge impact on the Dutch agricultural landscape, and have called for new designs for barns and agricultural facilities that can be integrated into other infrastructures and amenities. But the answer to this economic dilemma cannot be found solely in better designs for barns, especially if the rural character of the Green Heart is to be maintained (although the modernization of the dairy sector may certainly be a part of the solution). Rather, the issue requires exploring options for alternative and cooperative sources of income.

High demand, especially from China, means that small familyowned farms will not be able to compete and will be pressured to sell to larger farms, resulting in land consolidation similar to that seen after World War II.

A Sinking Sponge

03_Crisis: A Sinking Sponge

The Green Heart is Hollandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sponge, but it is sinking and overwhelmed. Much of the Green Heart is composed of medieval peat polders which are dubsiding quickly due to oxidation; at the same time, the capacity of the landcape to store water is not sufficient to deal with climate-change related flooding and drought. The boezem system is too small. Space for water must be found. This space can be found more easily found in farmland than in developed areas, and the expansion of wet areas slows subsidence. Some waterlogged peat polder regions are already considering large-scale intentional flooding because the ground is simply too wet to farm. Moreover, if the expansion of the boezem system were designed as an adjustment of existing water patterns (medieval ditches and canals) rather than as an entirely new element (such as VINEX water storage sites), it could provide the benefits of increased water without further shrinking the boundary of the Green Heart. Similar to the original development of Dutch cities, which could not be separated from land reclamation patterns, an expanded boezem system within the Green Heart could be considered in tandem with the overall evolution of this landscape.

Boezem System

Polders

Rate of Subsidence

Green Heart

04_The Resilience of Myth

The Green Heart’s political power comes not from its economic function or ecological value. Rather, it comes from what it represents to people living in a small, dense country in which no corner has been untouched by human intervention. It represents the alternative to sprawl, congestion, and relentless organization. It represents openness, history, a link to the past. It is the pastoral Other, the anti-city. Most people living in Holland today are well aware of the fact that the Green Heart is in no way a remnant of untouched nature, and that it has been (and continues to be) as relentlessly managed as the cities that surround it. In some ways it is MORE managed, since water levels in the peat polders must be carefully controlled in order to flush out saline water while allowing grass to grow. So the debates about the Green Heart within Dutch planning circles throughout the twentieth and twentyfirst century illustrate that it is in fact a signifier, a stand-in for certain values which may be most clearly expressed in Dutch landscape paintings that capture a particular kind of pastoral idyll. These scenes are descriptive, realistic, humble - and very similar to he

Landscape With Windmills Near Haarlem Jacob Van Ruisdael

images one finds today on the internet of “Dutch landscape”. The desire for greenness, for openness, for the picturesque, and for a link to history are particularly strong in a country which seems so “full”. There are particular forms which seem to resonate very strongly with these desires. The windmill, the cow, the image of the flat polder landscape, the barn..these are the staples of Dutch landscape paintings and also of contemporary representations of the Green Heart and the Dutch landscape in general. The very forms which act as lines in a systemic view of the Dutch layer cake - ditches and windmills understood as cogs in a very large and complex machine - must be appreciated here as icons, shapes, signifiers that are tied to culture. So the myth of the Green Heart exists at two scales: at the scale of landscape, and that of form. The myth of the landscape allows the Randstad to exist, justifies the growth of what could be understood as a polynucleic city with a large park in the center, but is not. The myth of form allows this landscape to be understood as something that it is not through signification, culturally understood and accepted icons that communicate a message which has nothing to do with function.

The significance of myth is that the issues which face the Green Heart today - a shifting, globalizing economy and the need to incorporate water - have the potential to drastically affect how it is perceived. And how the Green Heart is perceived has a significant effect on the identity and existence of the entire Randstad region. If the Green Heart loses its status as the Other which allows the city to exist, what happens to the city? This is about the resiliency of myth. In a land in which everything is artificial, it is not relevant to ask whether something is “real” or even “honest”. The question should be whether a particular myth needs updating, whether it is serving its function. If the myth of the pastoral as represented in classical Dutch painting served an important role in allowing the Randstad to exist in the twentieth and early twenty-first century, what comes next? How can the pastoral be updated to absorb necessary functional change? Or, to put it differently, how can landscape and formal changes work within, but evolve, the myth of the pastoral?

Cows in a River Aelbert Cuyp

Windmill at Wijk Bij Duurstede Jacob Van Ruisdael

River Landscape with Cattle Ferry Salomon Van Ruisdael

Milkmaid and Cows Aelbert Cuyp

Politicized Pastoral Forms

The Cow: an engineered dairy- and meat-producing machine which allowed generations of farmers in Europe to survive. Along with sheep, commonly seen in the Green Heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s peat polders because the ground is too saturated with water to grow crops. The Barn: a shelter for cows. Typically a large, simple structure; in the Netherlands, traditionally with a thatch roof and iconic profile/section. While typical modern barns (free stall barns) control animalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; access to food, water and rest, some modern barns attempt to take animal psychology and physiology into account, resulting in more open and flexible spaces and structures. The Windmill: icon of the Dutch landscape, often seen in rows surrounded by grass and ditches. Historically, functioned as a pump and a home simultaneously. Now, windmills generally have no function except as signifiers of the pastoral. Water Control: small sluices, gates, dikes and bridges dot the polder landscape and allow animals and humans to cross ditches while regulating the water level. Larger structures (modern pumps and larger infrastructures) often do not announce their function. Ditches and Canals: the basic organizing element of the Dutch pastoral, dividing plots and properties and determining the locations of streets and houses. Water can always been seen somewhere.

Cows

Barns

Forms of the Dutch Pastoral

Windmills

Water cont rol

d canals

Ditches an

River Dike

Defense line against river flooding but also a cause of subsidence

Wetering

Intermediate canal runing parallel to urbanized peat polder strips

Boezem

Major canal located between polders or in a waard

Extreme Subsidence

A sinking picturesque

Boezem

Regional water storage

Adaptation

Due to subsidence from peat oxidation

Flatness

A basic characteristic od Dutchness; paradoxially accentuating the limits of openness

Iconography

The windmill: both the engine of Dutch dryness, and a powerful signifier

Crisis?

Opportunity!

Blue Heart

Strategy for a Blue Heart

01_Soggy Peat Polders

The Blue Heart is a constructed nature that builds on the existing objects and patterns of the Green Heart even as it is radically changed. The myth of the pastoral is retained, while the objects that comprise it are shifted, warped, adjusted to come to terms with new realities. At the landscape scale, existing historical water patterns are manipulated to give them new water storage and economic functions; at the same time, their new collective nature motivates the reorganization of farm property and encourages a shift in mindset towards “living with water” as well as “taking advantage of water”.

This thesis proposes intervening in the Green Heart at multiple scales. At the regional (landscape) scale, the strategic expansion of the boezem system through the manipulation of existing water networks can be seen as more than a way to improve flood resilience: it could also serve to bolster local economies by creating a new “watery commons” that provides alternative sources of income for dairy farmers. At an architectural scale, the development of a new building typology – the “continuous farm” – within this altered landscape can act as the productive transect of this wet-dry gradient, bringing together water, cows and people into new assemblages. At both scales, the altered landscape is an alteration and evolution of the pastoral ideal.

The expansion of the boezem system with the Green Heart’s subsiding peat polders can take place by carefully examining existing water management patterns, to see that typically rows of farmhouses along an “urbanized strip” are separated by very long, thin plots. Weterings, or larger drainage canals, run parallel to the urbanized strips. While the farmhouses are homes and businesses that increasingly cater to urbanites seeking a break from city life, the long plots are often saturated with water and cannot be used for much besides grazing. What if this space between the built-up strips were simply allowed to become wetter, but in a strategic way that links this water with the larger water storage system (the boezem system?)

The wetering that bisects two urbanized strips could be expanded, dug out, allowed to flood, and the earth which is removed to allow this to happen could be shifted onto low mounds behind the farmhouses to prevent this water from spreading past the space it is allotted. Within these limits, however, this the water levels of this new â&#x20AC;&#x153;polder boezemâ&#x20AC;? could vary widely from season to season and in times of flood or drought. By connecting it to the existing regional-scale boezem system, the new polder boezem becomes a large space for water storage which has the imbedded flexibility to respond to the potentially large waer storage requirements of the future.

For the inhabitants of the peat polder, this new space becomes a zone of varying wetness that is collective, and can be utilized to extract income in a context in which small-scale dairy farming has little future. While dairy activities can continue on the mounds and directly behind each famhouse, new economic opportunities await in a landscape that is ecologically rich and shaped intentionally by the people who are living there now. Rather than existing in one of two states - wet and dry - inhabitants now have access to a continuous and continuously changing transect of wet to dry.

The creation of a new nature within the peat polder necessitates new architectural typologies that adjust and update the myth of the pastoral, while allowing it to continue shaping the identity of the Randstad. If the architectural forms associated with small-scale dairy farming on a peat polder are the barn and the windmill, what are the relevant icons and monuments of this new space? How do new functions, needs, requirements translate into architectural forms that resonate culturally? How can the myth of the Green Heart continue to act politically when it becomes the Blue Heart?

The transition from the Green Heart to the Blue Heart happens in the peat polder region (mostly located in the southern end of the Green Heart). Here, medieval reclamation has resulted in a typical settlement and water pattern of long, thin â&#x20AC;&#x153;urbanized stripsâ&#x20AC;? with very wet grazing plots between them. In the Blue Heart, the space between these urbanized strips is allowed to flood to become an extension of the boezem (water storage) system. It cannot happen all at once; rather, communities must negotiate amongst themselves and with the government the shape and topography of these new soggy areas, to decide how they can be best utilized. Over the course of several decades, the steadily expanding boezem system will allow the Green Heart to become a Blue Heart, while opening up new economic opportunity and increasing the water storage capacity of the landscape.

gb in ist Ex em

z oe

La su keb bs ed ide po nc lde e, ke r are pt a ( dr les y) s

Village

rip st d ze ni ba ur er ld po

OEZ

RB LDE

NEW

een

betw

lder d po ette strips w Re nized urba

Farmhouse

Ditch

Peat meadow

Wetering

Space between urbanized strips

Peat polder unit

Wetering

Urban extension

Kadijk (urbanized strip)

Mound

Maximum water level

Minimum water level Island

Soggy land/water

Mound

Pump

02_De-Polder System

102

The reorganization of the peat polder landscape necessitates a rethinking of property as well as a return to the kind of cooperative negotiation that exemplifies the polder system. If multiple farmers come together to form cooperatives of 3-4 farms, they can collectively negotiate the shape of the mound that separates their farmhouses from the new wet zone at one end of their properties. Because this water level is variable – generally higher in the winter and generally lower in the summer, but with unpredictable spikes and drops based on regional conditions – the profile of the mound determines the extent to which they own “dry” property vs. “wet” property. The material for the mound comes from the dredged earth that is a result of the widening of the wetering. The process of negotiation between groups of farms and the government is rooted in the old “polder system”, which is founded in democratic collaboration; this might more accurately be called the “unpolder” system. It is both the establishment of cooperatives and the existence of a new wet-dry transect that provides new economic opportunities for farmers. In terms of dairy production, the formation of cooperatives would allow for the use of pooled resources and economies of scale, allowing farmers to compete with

larger companies while retaining their independence. This may allow them to focus on alternative or niche markets as well as milk and cheese. The existence of the negotiated transect between wet and dry, moreover, opens up opportunities for income based on tourism and recreation as well as ecology (since the Dutch government does pay farmers directly for ecological services). For instance, canoeing through the Krimpenrwaard is a popular activity already; the creation of wider areas with more diverse vegetation and animal species could open up this landscape up to camping, fishing and other forms of recreation which could be monetized by farmers (and which is already occurring in other extremely wet agricultural areas). In the future, a system of expanded weterings could cover much of the peat polders polders, leaving urban strips and farms intact but radically changing how the landscape functions. As the population of Holland grows, this new kind of “Blue Heart” could also serve as a framework for a kind of urbanization that does not destroy the role of this region as the anti-Randstad. Rather than building new suburban subdevelopments, incoming urbanites and suburbanites could selectively infill the urban strip, while leaving the green-to-blue transect intact.

New architectural typologies needed to take economic advantage of boezem

Extent (width) of new boezem negotiated with landowners and government

Depoldered zone in subsiding peat polder

New ground 1

New ground 2

Water control point

Pump/continuous barn

Canoe

Rural Monument

De-poldered shared mound

Road with Farmhouses

New ground 1

New ground 2

Existing

The way the the ground/mound is shaped has an effect on the way the land can be used. Landowners can negotiate amongst themselves and with the government to design the profile of their land, given a certain minimum percentage of water and limited amount of fill material.

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Ro wo ute rk of in re gb c oa rea te tio rs na

Rur acc al Mo ess num ible e by nt boa t

New Boezem

e bl ria on a v ng ith ndi w e ds e p on de nee z l e y e sh ev ag ar r l or M ate r st w ate w

ou nd

Bar

ous

nu nti

A New Economic Commons in the Krimpenerwaard

108

The Krimpenerwaard is the fastest subsiding zone in the Green Heart and a typical example of a medieval peat polder landscape. Weterings run almost parallel to the two large rivers that surround the island, between urbanized farmhouse strips along original “kadijks” and along the river banks. Many parallel ditches run perpendicular to the weterings, dividing the land into long strips of roughly equal width. Several small towns are found on the farmhouse strips, and on the north side boezems extend from the river into the fields. Several original peat streams also cut through the landscape, recognizable by their meandering form. De Loet is a peat stream which has been allowed to create a semi-flooded area and forest, used as a recreation area. On the west side the suburbs of Rotterdam touch the edge of the waard. The Krimpenerwaard is marked by layers of water organization. A waard is a collection of water level zones (or polders), and in this one the original dividing lines between compartments have been simplified over the years. However, the target groundwater levels for each compartment still vary widely, because the different areas have subsided at different rates. The northern part of the Krimpenerwaard has subsided the most, leading some to classify it as an area that is best suited for “wet” activities rather than farming or grazing .

110

The creation of a Blue Heart calls for a strategic widening of existing waterways that is based on an analysis of the Krimpenerwaard’s “landscape grammar”; these new widened waterways then serve as flexible storage zones for water (new boezems), slow down subsidence by saturating the ground, and provide new opportunities for economic development.

Depending on regional water conditions and the time of the year, the new boezems widen outward several hundred meters, providing a safe place to store excess river water. The waterway to be widened bisects the plots between two farmhouse strips (meaning it is the farthest wetering from the farmhouses) and is fed by the extension of boezems that connect the two rivers on either side of the Krimpenerwaard – this ties this new wet area to the larger regional system of water storage. In order to stop this new water from flooding the farmhouses, new mounds are built between the farmhouses and the wetering, cutting off many of the ditches; the remaining water is rerouted into fewer larger canals that cut between the mounds, and contain a pump that maintains the correct flow of water between the new boezem and the existing ditches. This process creates a landscape that is seemingly subtly altered (the view from the road) but in reality is radically changed (the view from the boezem).

Rate of subsidence in the Krimpenerwaard

New polder boezem

High boezem controls flow of water to and from new polder boezem and outer water

Existing water control point

Space between urbanized strips = location of initial polder boezem

Urbanized strip

Outer water

Village

Boundary of waard

Back of the Mound From the street, the new water is not visible...only a gently rising topography.

Mound, +4.0m NAP Mounds are shaped by farmers in a process of negotiation with the local government. If farmers are willing to give up more land, they receive more payments from the government for biodiversity and may have more opportunities for income from recreation.

The Limit The line of farm buildings impacted by the new boezem forms the outer line of the landscape intervention. Inside the line, things radically change even as they stay familiar. Outside, life goes on as usual.

Pumping Station, -2.0m NAP The pumping station is necessary to keep water from flowing back into the polder when water levels in the boezem are high. They are located at the meeting of the high points of two adjacent mounds.

Continuous Barn, -2.16m - +2.0m NAP Continuous Barn no. 84 houses three herds of dairy cows and also specializes in cheesemaking tours. It features guest accomodations for recreational canoers and also rents boats. The barn is a cooperative of three family farms.

High (Feeder) Boezem, -0.33m NAP The boezem is an expansion of the historical boezem and acts as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;highâ&#x20AC;? boezem, which now pumps water into the new low boezems. Low Boezem The new water provides ample space for ice skating, swimming, canoeing and birdwatching.

A New Pastoral

Domestic Icon

01_Blue Heart Form

118

The transition from a Green Heart to a Blue Heart at the landscape scale comprises a typological shift that could be applied in many instances to gradually create a wetter, economically and ecologically more diversified landscape. But what about the objects in the landscape? What about the icons, the monuments, the signifiers of a romanticized pastoral that functions as the excuse for the Randstad? Can the Blue Heart remain an Other, rather than a large park? What happens when new people, new economies, new needs intrude? The forms of the Blue Heart should be understood in terms of their cultural function. Church steeples and windmills are the monuments and Holland, much like the castles of Germany or France. Barns and cows signify a pastoral landscape that is a refuge, a link to the past. But if a new collective, wet space opens up in the middle of the dairy farm, what happens to the barn? Is the new monument something that must be seen and understood from the water? How do these forms meet new needs while retaining their cultural value?

Monumental Icon

Rural Monument

New Nature

Economic Engine

The Continuous Barn

Given the reorganization of agricultural plots into wet-dry transects that terminate in a new watery commons, the architectural component of this project explores how a new building typology (itself a commons, albeit at a smaller scale) could allow farmers to effectively utilize this new landscape. This is an investigation of the shifting of a particular Green Heart typology (the barn) into a Blue Heart typology (the Continuous Barn). The construction of new assemblages, new collectives and collectivities at the architectural scale is contained in tension within the expanded prosthetic envelope of this kind of building. The Continuous Barn is a long building that begins at the road, follows the slope of the mound to the new pump, and extends over the water in the new boezem â&#x20AC;&#x201C; terminating in an A-frame viewing and fishing platform. In its form it echoes the typical barn shape, but it is subtly changed. Its image in the landscape is of an adjusted pastoral typology rather than an entirely new element; the figure of the barn in section and elevation warps and shifts as it heads to the water, while retaining its fundamental identity as a barn. The horizontality of the landscape is respected while subtly altered. The Continuous Barn is both an integral element of a reorganized water management and economic system, and an â&#x20AC;&#x153;updatingâ&#x20AC;? of an existing pastoral architectural typology (an adjustment of myth).

Point and Line

122

The Continuous Barn must be understood as a component of the Blue Heart water management system, which expands weterings that run between two urbanized strips into new boezems, bounded on either side by mounds which have a profile that is negotiated between landowners. The Continuous Barn is both a point object and a component of a larger system. It is built above one of the feeder canals that regulate stretch between the new boezem and the existing water system, and contains within it the pump that regulates the level of the water (and prevents high water levels in the polder boezem from spreading into the rest of the polder). One end faces the urbanized strip, and the other hovers above the water in the boezem. Because it contains the pump, the barn is integral to the larger landscape system of water. Because it bisects two mounds, it acts to tie together economic functions of multiple farmers and entrepreneurs, contributing to the commons.

Affected farms, new feeder boezem and wetering to be expanded; feeder canals to be preserved

New high ground and pumps

New topography and new boezem

Continuous Barns link road to new boezem

Human Tube, tensile conditioned space for human activity

Cladding for Continuous Barn (ventilated rainscreen)

Trusses for main barn envelope

Secondary ribs for Human Tube

Plumbing, wiring and fecal matter transport under floor

Behind the high point of the mound, the ground is no wetter than previously, and the barn is level with the ground

Lift

130

The program of the Continuous Barn relies on the section (relationship to the ground) as well as plan (relationship to the road/boezem and degree of wetness) for definition. The cow sleeping areas (sub-barns) are located mostly in zones with access to pasture - that is, where the Continuous Barn is all the same level as the ground. However, given the fact that the topography of the mound can be irregular, cows must sometimes walk to specific points in order to be let out. Human programs consist of functions carried out by workers (office work, sales, tours, farm labor, taking care of livestock) as well as recreational or tourist areas for visitors (a cheese market, guest accommodations, fishing and viewing platform, restaurant). Where the barn is closest to the road, it contains public functions like a storefront and gallery; where it hovers over the boezem it contains functions that cater to visitors coming from this waterway; and where it is closely ties to existing pasture it contains more worker spaces and functions. Important nodes within the Continuous Barn include the end that reaches the road (the old pastoral); the end which hovers over the water (the new pastoral); and the inflection point of the pump, which is relevant because it is the high point of the mound on either side, the control point for water flowing through the canal, a crossing point for animals moving through the

barn, and the point at which canoers paddling into the building actually dock their boats and enter. For farmers, the Continuous Barn is a shared space for income generation from cows and visitors alike that benefits from the new wet landscape. For cows, it is a space that allows newfound freedom of movement and access to pasture. For tourists, it is a space that can be accessed either from the road or from the water

and that offers leisure facilities, a resting stop on a canoe tour, access to purchase local dairy and farm products, and an â&#x20AC;&#x153;authenticâ&#x20AC;? pastoral experience. If urbanites and suburbanites choose to move into this region in the future, the Continuous Barn can serve as a flexible armature for infill that does not destroy pastoral or ecological values. Even as the road becomes more densely infilled, the Continuous Barn can continue to serve as a space that allow for different, less homogenous assemblages.

As the ground getts wetter and lower, the barn becomes elevated

Barn raised above new boezem with entrance in floor for entry from boats

Between the high pionts of the mounds to eaither side, the barn contains a pump that controls the water level in the boezem

Viewing Platform The viewing platform includes a printer and frame shop that allows the user to instantly capture the moment on high-quality paper.

Restaurant Featuring homemade dairy products

Pumping Station The pumping station contains a control room for the pump as well as workspaces for staff. The station opens out onto the mounds on both sides.

Canoe Entrance Canoers can enter the Continuous Guest Rooms Barn via a slit in the floor that Guest rooms in this section of the terminates in canoe storage and Continuous Barn are primarily access. Visitors are led directly designed for habitation in the into a reception room. summer

Barn Composting barn for 25 cows which includes a manure pit, a milking area, feeding trough, food storage, medical area, and office for workers.

Gathering for Entrance/Exit The pumping station is also the main access into the pasture for the center part of the Continuous Barn. Here, cows wait to be let in and out.

Guest Rooms Wintertime guest accommodations.

Workspaces For use by farmers or to rent out.

Barn Composting barn for 25 cows which includes a manure pit, a milking area, feeding trough, food storage, medical area, and office for workers.

Hayloft Food storage for cows.

Cheesemaking Preoduction and storage.

Guest Rooms Wintertime guest accommodations.

Barn Composting barn for 25 cows which includes a manure pit, a milking area, feeding trough, food storage, medical area, and office for workers.

Market Place of exchange for visitors and workers.

Large Equipment Storage Tractors, milking machines, small trucks, etc.

Street Storefront Main entrance for visitors and workers. Information, small gallery, gift shop, office.

Garden/Farmyard Community vegetable garden with chickens, ducks, pigs, etc.

Storefront

Manure Scraping

Cow Waiting Area

Storefront

Manure Scraping

Cow Waiting Area

Gallery

Barn/Guest Accomodations

Office

Gallery

Barn/Guest Accomodations

Office

Garden/Workspace

Milking

Market

Storefront

Manure Scraping

Cow Waiting Area

Gallery

Barn/Guest Accomodations

Office

Gallery

Barn/Guest Accomodations

Office

Garden/Workspace

Milking

Market

Garden/Workspace

Milking

Market

Equipment Storage

Restaurant

Cheesemaking

The exterior envelope is a rainscreen that allows for maximum ventilation

Prosthetic Object

138

Conceptually the barn is considered to be an expanded prosthetic that defines different building envelopes (as prosthetic devices or “life supports” ) for different inhabitants – namely cows and humans. Following trends in organic farming that radically simplify and “dematerialize” barns into simple roof structures with no stalls, robotic milking and plenty of ventilation, the outer envelope of the barn is nothing more than a rainscreen on trusses. Wood cladding wraps around the figure but splits to allow light and air to penetrate. The floor is hollow, allowing liquid waste from animals to flow down the slight slope into containers at the end. Animals are housed in several sleeping areas (subbarns) within the continuous barn, but are allowed the freedom to walk up and down the structure and out onto the pastures. The thermal requirements for humans are not the same as for cows; while cows generate enough heat to keep themselves warm at night, people generally require some form of insulation and climate control. The “human tube” is a separate thermal envelope that is inserted into the Continuous Barn and allows humans to share space with cows. The human tube penetrates, bisects and at times hovers above the barn, allowing for changed and closer relationships between cows and humans. It generates symbiotic relationships; for instance, guest accommodations in the wintertime are located above the barn, allowing the heat from cows to warm the human tube. Cow milking stations are located next to a milk bar. Manure pits are located underneath toilets.

The Human Tube is conditioned for human thermal comfort and strategically located relative to other programs and the presence of cows

Water from the boezem flows underneath the barn and through a pump

Animals are able to enter and leave the barn at moments where it touches the ground

The end of the Continuous Barn is a storefront and a â&#x20AC;&#x153;dront doorâ&#x20AC;? for workers and visitors alike. An entrance hall takes up almost all of the space at the very end; the human tube gradually narrows as it gets further away from the street, and becomes a hall that skirts a farmyard and garden.

As the Continuus Barn extends into the boezem, the Human Tube adjusts to new programmatic requirements and begins to push at the exterior envelope, warping it into new profiles. Near the center of the Continuous Barn are sleeping areas for cows (what would normally be called barns). Due to the immense heat of the cows, in the winter guest accommodations are located above the sub-barn. In this case the human tube rises and twists before crossing down on the opposite side of the barn. The cows use a composting barn technique, which produces extra heat and does not require the use of individual stalls.

Main public entrance to Continuous Barn

Composting barn with winter guest accommodations above (using heat from animals)

02_New Monuments

148

The forms of the Blue Heart are not limited to the Continuous Barn. For instance, the islands in the polder boezem - shaped intentionally - could contain new monuments, new versions of the windmill (or barn, or cow) which may be experienced from far away or up close. They may have a variety of functions: touristic, related to dairy operations, or ecology. All of these forms need to be understood as elements in a cohesive landscape, and not simply as buildings. Their functions extend to how they are seen, to their cultural relevance. TBD...

Conclusions

The Blue Heart is a new nature, an adaptation and evolution of the Dutch Green Heart that responds to the pressures of globalization and climate change while interrogating that which gives it cultural value: the mythical forms of its pastoral identity. At the scale of landscape, building and even building envelope the Blue Heart creates new assemblages that question existing relationships; the form and content of the pastoral is radically altered even as its urban function is not. This thesis operates in two registers simultaneously - landscape/system and architecture/form - and investigates how they relate within a specific context; points affect lines and lines affect points. The form of a building carries meaning that makes itself understood not only through its role as a signifier, but as an element within a network. The network is localized in physical space in the form of objects and buildings. The production of myth (in this case, the myth of a pastoral idyll) and the relationship between myth and architectural form becomes a critical element within a context that demands to be understood systemically. The Blue Heart is not complete. It is a world that demands more elaboration, more design, more thought. It is full of possibility. And when the empty signifier of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Natureâ&#x20AC;? is stripped away, the question of making it becomes a political one rather than a moral one. What kind of world do we want to create? Who lives in it, humans and nonhumans? What are we willing to give up in return for our new home? How do we work together to make this new nature? In Holland these questions like close to the surface: they have been asked countless times the first settlers decided to try to domesticate the marsh. The Blue Heart is one such nature, one possible world to be co-produced.

Appendix

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Paintings

FLOCK OF SHEEP AT PASTURE, AELBERT CUYP

COWS IN A RIVER, AELBERT CUYP

LANSCAPE WITH CATTLE, AELBERT CUYP

LANSCAPE WITH HORSEMAN, AELBERT CUYP

MILKMAID AND COWS, AELBERT CUYP

PANORAMIC LANDSCAPE WITH SHEPHERDS, AELBERT CUYP

VIEW OF HAARLEM, JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

WHEAT FIELDS, JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

VIEW OF NAARDEN, JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE FERRY, SALOMON VAN RUISDAEL

RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH FERRY, SALOMON VAN RUISDAEL

RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH A SAILBOAT, SALOMON VAN RUISDAEL

A VIEW OF DEVENTER SEEN FROM THE NORTHWEST, SALOMON VAN RUISDAEL

WINDMILL AT WIJK BIJ DUURSTEDE, JACOB VAN RUISDAEL