This friday at 16:30 an inter­est­ing exhi­bi­tion opens @ the Casla in Almere. It will fea­ture the win­ning projects of the Een­voud Com­pe­ti­tion, the third edi­tion for an experimetal neigh­bour­hood in Almere. Its pre­de­ces­sors, “De Fantasie” and “De Realiteit”, ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Reality’ were held back in the eight­ies and their results are still worth an excur­sion. More infor­ma­tion on that below.

“De Éénvoud” or ‘Simplicity ‘is the result of a com­pe­ti­tion held in 2006. The brief was to design a free­stand­ing and simple low-​cost house, express­ing their own wishes and ideas for dwelling. The win­ners got the pos­si­bil­ity to build their design on a beau­ti­ful open spot in the wood­land of Noorderplassen-​West.

The twelve win­ning projects, amongst which an ornithologist’s house, a rubber house, a con­vert­ible house and a scaled ver­sion of the Unité d’Habitation were sub­mit­ted from The Nether­lands, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Por­tu­gal and Sweden. The houses will have a per­ma­nent char­ac­ter, with a min­i­mum of build­ing reg­u­la­tions. Some of the projects will be built by the design­ers them­selves; nine projects are still open for clients to join in.

The Exhi­bi­tion “De Éénvoud” opens the 28th of march and will run until 10th of may 2008 @ Archi­tec­tu­ur­centrum CASLa, Weer­wa­ter­plein 3, 1324 EE Almere Stad
Open Tues­day to Sat­ur­day between 12.00-17.00

The Pre­de­ces­sors
“De Fan­tasie” and “De Realiteit” were meant to stay only for five years, but as always with exper­i­men­tal projects, they usu­ally last longer than per­ma­nent houses. The houses are used either for per­ma­nent living, as hol­i­day homes or stu­dios.
They are part of a number of spe­cial res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods in Almere, amongst which such ridicu­losi­ties as The Regen­boog­wijk (Rain­bow Quar­ter), Ste­den­wijk (City Quar­ter), Muziek­wijk (Music Quar­ter), Filmwijk (Movie Quar­ter), Park­wijk (Park Quar­ter). De Realiteit and De Fan­tasie have arguably yielded the most strik­ing archi­tec­ture. De Realiteit com­prises sev­en­teen projects on the Noorder­plassen lakes, while nine houses make up De Fan­tasie on Weerwater.

De Fan­tasie
De Fan­tasie has devel­oped into a beau­ti­ful and tran­quil neigh­bor­hood on the south­west shore of the Weer­wa­ter. Because of the involve­ment of the people in this area it has the feel of a hol­i­day resort. The inten­tion was to build homes which were to be demol­ished after five years. How­ever, due to the project’s suc­cess, the houses are still stand­ing. A strik­ing design in this quar­ter is ‘Hard Glass’, by archi­tect Jan Ben­them of famous dutch office Ben­them Crouwel. It was one of their first projects, now they are build­ing every major train sta­tion, air­port etc. This project, ‘Hard Glass’ is a glass, cubic villa which has been lifted off the ground by a con­struc­tion of steel tubes. The living quar­ters inside the cube resem­ble an aquar­ium. The type of doors also used on ships divide the villa’s rooms.
The VVV (the local tourist infor­ma­tion office) in Almere has a CASla route descrip­tion through De Fan­tasie which you can enjoy with­out a guide.

De Realiteit
The ‘tem­po­rary char­ac­ter’ is also reflected in the much talked-​about quar­ter De Realiteit. Here too the houses are still stand­ing, as they are a resound­ing suc­cess. De Realiteit lies in a fairly remote area, which has resulted in a sur­pris­ing ambi­ence. The sev­en­teen houses differ in the mate­ri­als used and the con­struc­tion, but mainly in shape. The house cre­ated by Dick Brui­jne and Gerard Kop­pel­man is a strik­ing design which stands out. ‘A bird is flying under­neath our house’ is sus­pended five meters above the ground in a steel frame. The house itself is a small, two-​storied wooden cube. The sur­face area of the house is small in pro­por­tion to the steel frame.
You prob­a­bly also come across ‘Markies’ a house which unfold from a trailer. I guess you won’t see it there though since its con­stantly on the road.
De Realiteit is sit­u­ated on the Noorder­plassen and the VVV also has a route descrip­tion on this one.
Check out the web­site for more details on the houses.
More photos also here