In the coming years Almere is expected to swell from 160,000 to 250,000 inhabitants. The zoning plans reveal that the city is to meet this colossal building task merely by erecting terraced housing in densities more suited to the government's out-of-town expansion programme (VINEX). Hence this alternative proposal for a new urban concept. Proceeding from the same density as the VINEX areas, I developed a new urbanism inspired by the history of the Dutch polders.

In the 17th century, rich merchants had estates built in the new polders, surrounding them with broad rows of trees to protect them against the wind. My design is for a 21st-century estate. In its tree-lined grounds, superblocks alternate with land for other uses. The prevailing conception of the superblock is likewise revised in my plan, which mixes buildings and landscapes in the third dimension much like MVRDV's Expo 2000 pavilion. This creates a 3D matrix of plots into which housing units can be inserted.

My design is located to the south-east of Almere. To the west of it lies Almere-Hout, a district in the making, to the east a large natural area. The site I have chosen is large enough for 40,000 units with a density equal to that of a standard VINEX district. By compacting the 40,000 within the superblocks of my new estates I have reduced the footprint to a third of what it would be in a VINEX development. The remaining surface area is large enough to accommodate an attractive landscape between the estates, an 'eventscape' where a welter of functions alternates with natural and cultivated land. So the residents live in an urban environment with all the requisite amenities including theatres, cinemas and shopping malls. This urbanity is embedded in an utterly new type of patchwork landscape where residents can make use of a wealth of recreational facilities only a stone's throw from their home. This gives residents and visitors alike the opportunity to 'collage' their leisure time. The options vary from sports in a large open landscape to the idyll of a small patch of organic farmland. You can cycle and ramble in natural surroundings, indulge in all kinds of water sports or visit an entirely new type of park possibly combined with shopping. In the force field between urban expansion and nature area there is for the first time a well-crafted 'soft' transition between town and country.

To show that the estates are not just a bland assemblage of identical edges and that it is possible to fit 40,000 units into 18 of them, I have fleshed out a programme for each estate and worked up one in detail at a scale of 1:1000.

Place of education: Wageningen University
Specialization: landscape architecture
Tutor: Frank de Josselin de Jong