building

green

goingdutch RICK LEBRASSEUR

The Dutch approach to

mixed uses, open space,
infrastructure, and reuse as
creative tools may hold some
lessons for practitioners in
North America.
RICK LEBRASSEUR

RICK LEBRASSEUR

Water is what defines the Dutch landscape. Until 2004, the Maasvlakte Alterra, a research institute for the green
in Rotterdam was the world’s largest seaport, the largest oil shipment center, and the site of living environment located in Wageningen
in the southeastern part of the Netherlands,
the world’s largest steel company, Unilever, and petrochemical baron Shell. Chinese cities has environmentally friendly green buildings
now hold the distinction of being the world’s largest seaport and the world’s largest oil ship- with lush gardens and a biofilter pond/
ment center, but it was the efficient use of water and adjacent land that enabled Rotterdam detention basin that captures rainwater.
to remain such an important business hub for decades.
“Given the precious amount of land available, we can never stop pumping our pold-
ers [low-lying tracts of land],” maintains Aaron Betsky, director of the Netherlands Archi-
tecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam and former curator of the San Francisco Museum of

JUNE 2007 U R B A N LA N D 65
 its environmentally friendly green buildings, which
encapsulate lush gardens and climate-moderating
pools, its constructed wetlands in the outside court-
yards hold and clean stormwater, which is then pumped
into the buildings, undergoes a series of spills and rhi-
zofiltration, and is reused as internal irrigation.
Surrounding Alterra, vegetated bioswales leading to
polders separate the parking areas and pathways from the
buildings. A large detention basin/biofiltration pond cap-
tures all rainwater from the roof catchment system and
overland runoff before returning it to the adjacent farmland
polders. “All buildings [and constructs] interfere with the
environment, so each building should be worth the inter-

The Maasvlakte in Rotterdam,
the Netherlands, was until
recently the world’s largest
seaport and the largest
oil shipment center. Those
distinctions have been taken
over by Chinese cities, but
it was the efficient use of
water and adjacent land
that enabled Rotterdam
for decades to remain a
major business hub.
Modern Art. “It’s a full-time job to prevent the Dutch In Amsterdam, two bright red
pedestrian bridges connect the
landscape from sliding back to where it came from.” Borneo Sporenburg housing
To reclaim their land from the water, the Dutch open developments, which are located
up and dig the land, yet they choose how to develop on reclaimed earthen peninsulas
in the rejuvenated eastern docks
this land selectively. The “spatial arrangement of the district; residences open directly
land is determined by the Ministry of Agriculture, to the canals.
Nature, and Food Quality, which dictates how the land
is to be used,” explains Betsky. “Almost 80 percent of
the agriculture in the Netherlands is subsidized. Farmers
are often paid to not grow profitable crops. The ministry
has decided to preserve open space—to preserve the
Dutch identity and the landscape. The subsidies provide
for the ‘right’ agriculture and landscape,” he notes.
“A fundamental trait of humans is how we satisfy
our desires by changing the natural world around us,”
Michael Pollan wrote in his 2001 book The Botany of
Desire. The Dutch landscape was formed through
human interference with natural processes, yet this
approach has been proven capable of maintaining
the sensitive equilibrium between the environment
and human activity. Through creation starting in 1918
RICK LEBRASSEUR

of the Zuiderzee Works, the system of dams and land

reclamation and water drainage systems that hold
back the Atlantic Ocean, the Dutch established goals
for how much land is allocated to agriculture, flood
protection, water control, transportation, and freshwater
reservoirs. Essentially a large-scale planning effort, the
program still affects land use today.
Alterra, a research institute for the green living envi-
ronment located in Wageningen in the southeastern
part of the Netherlands, exemplifies a number of Dutch
notions about development and land use. In addition to
ference,” says Stefan Behnisch, Alterra’s architect and
principal of Behnisch, Behnisch & Partners in Stuttgart,
Germany. For all the generated “interference,” Alterra
seems appropriately integrated into its environment.
In Amsterdam, a design by San Francisco–based
landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates and
Dutch urban design and landscape architecture firm

66 U R B A N LA N D JUNE 2007
 building
green

RICK LEBRASSEUR

The newly completed Cultural Park Westergasfabriek in the

heart of Amsterdam includes a portion that was reclaimed
from an outdated coal gasification facility.
G U S TA F S O N - P O R T E R I N C .

West 8 illustrates that the built landscape can accom-

modate equally well both human use and ecological
health. West 8, led by Adriaan Geuze, designed an
urban open space for the thousands of residents living
in and near the Borneo Sporenburg housing develop- Also in Amsterdam, the newly completed Culture
ment, which is perched on reclaimed earthen peninsu- Park Westergasfabriek, designed by landscape architect
las in the rejuvenated eastern docks district, Oostelijk Kathryn Gustafson, is a massive 35-acre (14-ha) park, 12
Havengebied. The area is considered remarkably akin acres (4.9 ha) of which have been reclaimed from an out-
to the East Boston piers and new urban development dated coal gasification facility. The park shows how left-
adjacent to downtown Boston’s waterfront. over, unused brownfield sites can be given a new sense
In Borneo Sporenburg, the 450-foot- (135-m-) wide of value for communities. Because it would have been
public green cuts diagonally through the blocks of hous- too expensive to remove contamination completely, a
ing units, providing maximum sun exposure and wind new layer of protective soils was added. The park is now
protection. Many activities take place here: soccer, a draw for both community and cultural activities.
biking, playing, and socializing. Predominantly lawn with As was done in such similar experiments as Parc de
a few lines of trees, the open space has a scale and la Villette in Paris and Duisburg Nord Landscape Park
density that fit in well with the low-rise, high-density and Emscher Park in Germany, the old, unique build-
units. Two bright red pedestrian bridges connect the ings and structures in the Culture Park were retained
area’s housing developments; residences open directly and are now used for cultural and artistic purposes.
to the canals. Dutch minimalism is prominent here: the Activity areas and other spaces are defined by two main
blocks of rectangular two- and three-story units, clad in axes: one is linear and located near the canal-bordered
brownish-red brick with square windows, are punctu- street; the other, the “Path of Dreams,” meanders
ated by the 279-foot (93-m) arching bridges, visible from through spaces identified by such labels as the flower
almost any location on the waterfront. The pedestrian- field, the forest, the beach, and the orchard. The large
scale landscape elements correspond with the urban grassy berm at the northern edge of the park, almost 60
setting and flat terrain. Automobile use is kept to one feet (18 m) tall, serves not only as a lookout point and
side of the public green to maintain the relationship an amphitheater for the turf areas below, but also as a
among the bridges, water, and green space. barrier between the park and the busy railway behind it.

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RICK LEBRASSEUR
RICK LEBRASSEUR RICK LEBRASSEUR

At a reclaimed military facility in northeastern Ams-
terdam, West 8 designed a public landscape that bal-
ances environmental needs with personal space for 12
small, four-story units in a project known as GWL Ter-
rain. Modernist in style, the units are staggered through-
out the site, separated by 80 feet (24 m) of open space.
Each ground unit has a 200-square-foot (19-sq-m) garden
enclosed by a four-foot- (1.2-m-) high black vinyl chain-
link fence. Additional fencing in the open space sepa-
rates vegetable plots, picnic areas, community gardens,
play areas, and other amenities from the wide pedestrian
greenway that connects these spaces to each other and
the larger urban landscape.
All fencing supports evergreen plantings, creating a
green barrier, as well as a sense of ownership and pri-
vacy for residents, while also providing an overall public
amenity and a seemingly larger green space. The north-
Urban landscapes respond to their ecologies—human and natural.
ern edge of the site has a 30-foot- (9.1-m-) wide, four-
foot- (1.2-m-) deep open water channel with reeds,
cattails, and even a pair of ducks. This basin, a func-
tional biofilter unconnected to the existing infrastructure,
cleanses stormwater runoff before it enters the sewer
system, and gives children an opportunity to encounter
nature more readily than they could at the typically inac-
cessible, gaping, rock-reinforced canals.
The architectual landscapes and dense housing
designs in the Netherlands are considered impressive,
largely due to the social, political, and cultural processes
they set in motion. The esteemed Dutch polder model
engages all stakeholders in decision making with regard
to open space and land use. Decisions are not finalized
until a compromise is reached that everyone can live
with for the sake of the common good.
Land is used to regulate resource consumption; there
are no monumental anomalies such as super-dense New
York City, the New Jersey industrial yards, the California
aqueduct system, or the U.S. Midwestern Grain Belt. The
Dutch value their resources—the most important being
land. This small nation, one of the world’s most densely
populated countries, effectively manages to use its land
for housing, recreation, work, transportation, and ecology.
The Dutch model of intensive land use, the contin-
ued exploration of building patterns and ideas, and the
building
green
ecological awareness could serve as a framework for
how to address the complications generated by sprawl.
Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the Hague provide exam-
ples of a fabric of varied land uses, closely arranged
and compressed, that eliminates the excessive expense
of extended infrastructure and exurban sprawl.
The Netherlands has dozens of medium-sized urban
centers that it views as potentially malleable, nonstatic
entities that can be redeveloped and redesigned, and
applies the practice of adaptive use to them within a
larger environmental context. The 30-year-old center of
Utrecht, for example, is being demolished, but its infra-
structure is being reused to meet the ever-changing
trends of human urban life.
The Netherlands constitutes a sustainable and
regenerative landscape. The Dutch use nature in an envi-
ronmentally responsible manner, practice stringent agri-
biodiversity, and use a systems approach to planning—
choices that help shape habitats and landscapes. An
ecological relationship with the land, as the Dutch have
shown, also can lead to a prosperous balance of agricul-
tural/economic land uses and landscapes integrating
cities with nature to provide open space for people.
So how can Americans better use the landscape?
Perhaps it is a question of what they want from nature.
Only by defining clearly how they value nature can
Americans develop new paradigms for an active rela-
tionship with it. Why do they view their resources to be
less precious than the Dutch see theirs to be? Perhaps
Americans must first make their relationship to the land
ecological—rather than just view the land as an indefi-
nite extension of the built environment. UL
R I C K L E B R A SS E U R is director of the University of California
at Berkeley Extension’s Sustainable Environmental Design and
Stewardship Program.
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