Our heritage
The Famous Beemster Polder
The Beemster Famous Polder
Polder Aesthetics Lines extending into the distance, wide expanses and an uncluttered horizon are typical of the polder landscape of The Netherlands. These aesthetic qualities sprang from an ever-changing balance between developments in water management and agriculture. The polder landscape has been evolving since the ninth century. The Western part of The Netherlands was at that time inaccessible marshland and sea. Colonists dug ditches and channels in order to drain the water from the uppermost layer of peat. The resulting land was used to cultivate crops.
From the 11th century, this reclamation was tackled systematically by issuing parcels with a standard size creating the uniform division of land in the lowlands of Holland.
Experiments In the 16th century it became technically feasible to reclaim large expanses of water in a single operation. These poldering projects were a technological and architectonic development of the early peatland polders. The empty landscape that resulted provided a blank canvas for experimentation in urban planning and landscape architecture.
The Beemster (1608-1612) is the first large-scale and the most famous polder. Here uniform division became an all-powerful ideal. The same layout principles can be found in all subsequent polders, though applied less rigidly. The objective with every polder was an optimum configuration of the water system, the subdivision of land, the road system and the settlement pattern. Friction between the irregular form of the land and the ideal agricultural and urban landscape was inevitable.
Reclamation of Land The Beemster, the most famous area of reclaimed land in The Netherlands, was extremely important for the development of architecture, landscape architecture, and civil and agricultural engineering in The Netherlands. Its creation saw the convergence of a number of advances which in a short space of time brought about a shift from land reclamation to land planning.
Grid
In the Beemster, an autonomous grid of squares was superimposed
on the landscape by Dirck van Oss (one of the private initiators) and Lucas Jansz. Sinck. (surveyor). In the seventeenth century, builders, surveyors and
gardeners planned cities, gardens and the landscape according to the "ideal of the straight line," with the square standing as a symbol for "solidity" and "cohesion."
Square
This rational structuring principle was largely based on the ideal of the Dutch city put forward by Simon Stevin (1548 - 1620). The scenic articulation of the layout was primarily expressed in the planting of lanes of trees along the main access roads. Long rows of alder and willow outlined rectangular "chambers" in the landscape and provided a vertical articulation of the grid. The square returns consistently in every man-made element of the polder - even in the country estates and the farmhouses. The landscape of the Beemster is purely architectonic. The same layout can be found in