The new town of Almere lies on arti­fi­cial land and was foun­ded in 1977. Con­sist­ing mainly of low-rise ter­raced houses, it always served as an over­spill for Amsterdam and didn’t have a city centre of its own.

In the 1990s the crit­ic­al mass of inhab­it­ants was reached and the muni­cip­al­ity decided to finally insert a centre into the town. An ambi­tious mas­ter­plan was made by OMA and filled with build­ings by inter­na­tion­ally renowned archi­tects. Now that Almere finally has a heart, the city con­tin­ues to grow and serve as an exper­i­ment­al field for all kinds of hous­ing typo­lo­gies and innov­at­ive neigh­bour­hood con­cepts. In Homer­uskwarti­er, a city dis­trict with 720 self-build plots is being cre­ated accord­ing to a mas­ter­plan by OMA, and in neigh­bour­ing Plan Duin, a hous­ing area on three arti­fi­cial dunes has star­ted to arise from the polder land.