NAGELE I

Nagele is one of ten so-called satellite villages built around Emmeloord in the Noordoostpolder. Whereas the other 9 villages are designed along the ideas of the then fashionable Delftse School, in Nagele, a group of modernist architects were eventually permitted to fully implement their ideas. The result is in effect the missing link between Dutch Modernism, particularly De Stijl, on the one hand, and Structuralism on the other. The latter would officially first be implemented about a decade later in the Municipal Orphanage I Amsterdam, but the general layout of Nagele really showcases the same ideas in a wider, urban planning context. The initial sketches were produced by Gerrit Rietveld in the late 1940s and then developed further by Cornelis van Eesteren. Architects who subsequently designed the buildings within this landscape include Aldo van Eyck, Theo Taen en Thomas Nix among others. As these oanoramic shots reveal, the basic plan involved a large central green, designed by Mien Ruys, with a small shopping centre, three churches and three schools built on the edges of the green. Surrounding the central green are smaller greens which form the focal points of groups of dwellings, intended mostly for farmworkers who would work on the farms surrounding the village, whereas previously, these workers would live in dwellings on the farms themselves. At a time when so-called pillarisation was still a central tenet of Dutch society, with social housing usually organised along the lines of these pillars, a conscious choice was made here to first mix these up in the houses, and then to place facilities such as schools and churches, which still catered to these pillars on the central green, forcing the different groups to constantly meet and interact, with a view to creating a larger community that transcended the pillars. This was also evident in the choice to for example only built one village pub, whereas traditionally, each pillar would have their own pub.