The Strip | Jana Culek

Noordoostpolder consists mostly of agricultural land. Every piece of land has been engineered. There is no real nature. Each farmer, the polder’s predominant figure, was carefully chosen to inhabit this area based on his background, education and personal values. Everything is planned, calculated and meticulously organized. Farmers reside on their agricultural land, which is evenly and geometrically distributed throughout the polder. The amount of land each farmer is given depends on his potential and social status. The laborers are picked by the farmers. They reside in villages which are evenly distributed throughout the polder.
Even though the entire area was designed for the farmers there is a worrying lack of any substance planned for them aside from housing and agricultural buildings. So the question arises of where do the farmers spend their time when they are not working? In an area that was completely preplanned, it is an anomaly that nothing was planned for the farmers.
Originally, the sizes of the tree boxes (the farmer settlements) depended on the size of the owned and processed land. Today this factor is no longer relevant since the tree boxes are not necessarily inhabited by farmers, or for that matter, by anyone. Some of the boxes have seized to be settlements while some seized to be agricultural. The structure of the population has changed and the morphology has changed with it. But unfortunately, most of the changes that have occurred have been, once again, in the agricultural sector. There were no significant changes or improvement in the quality of life of the people living within the farm settlements of Noordoostpolder.
The biggest issue of the area is the inability to socialize properly. The distances between people are vast. In some cases, kilometers separate people from their first neighbor. The change in use within the settlements has left some people living alone within a cluster, with their first neighbors being farmers that only work but do not live within the cluster itself. The people living within the clusters have no opportunity to socialize and no place to do it on a daily basis. The structure of the plots, the distance of the buildings from the road, makes random encounters impossible. Together with no interesting content along the endlessly long streets between the clusters this utter lack of any visible people makes having fun and socializing within the farm areas of Noordoostpolder completely impossible.
This project looks into these problems and tries to propose a solution for the lonely people of Noordoostpolder. By investigating the Noordoostpolder area as well as other agricultural areas in Europe a solution is proposed that can be viewed both as a system and as an individual solution. Since the initial purpose and idea of the Noordoostpolder design was to produce an area that will allow for plentiful production of agricultural products, other parts of life were ignored. By imposing a strict structure on all levels of creating the polder, from land size to house shape and orientation, the makers of the polder have made later improvements very difficult. Life today has other needs that are seen as important as work (if not even more). In order to have a productive professional life (be it farming or any other profession), a person needs to have a fulfilling personal and social life. Since the professional part is something that functions rather well in the Noordoostpolder today, focusing on the aspect of socialization should bring up the quality of life and thus return a much needed balance within the Noordoostpolder. By introducing a fixed yet flexible system of land use and repurposing, an opportunity is given for the people to use it in any way that interests them. This way, new people have the opportunity to come to the Noordoostpolder, even on a temporary basis, which could drastically change the scenery of the area. Even if only a small percentage of land is used in this new way, lives of the people in the Noordoostpolder would be changed for the better, by giving them the possibility of random encounters.
A suggestion is also given to change the housing plots. By trying to bridge the distance from the street to the house, thus making it less scary for a random passerby to come in and socialize, a new type of object/use is introduced. By sharing their farming knowledge, selling their products and involving non-professional farmers into their day to day routines, the farmers living in the Noordoostpolder receive a much needed, rich social life.
The system has the possibility to improve the bonds within the community. By interacting with people who may not predominately reside in the Noordoostpolder, or just with people from other areas of the polder, knowledge and friendship is shared and a full life is achieved.