Sara Davin Omar/Confront
→ Brutus
An Agricultural Machine for Haarlemmermeerpolder
Diploma project, 2020
Supervisor: Roberto Gargiani
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH
Despite its small size, the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. A conditio sine qua non for this are the large-scale, rationalizing interventions that its territory underwent throughout modernity, notably the construction of polders: low-lying land reclaimed from water forming artificial hydrologic entities. Comprising the cities of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Rotterdam and Utrecht, the Randstad is a densely populated conurbation that developed simultaneously with the extension of the land through poldering. The soil as well as the urban sprawl of the Randstad can therefore be understood as products of capitalism that were established through the agricultural sector.
Following this logic, Brutus amplifies the role of the territory of the Randstad in general and Haarlemmermeerpolder in particular as an agricultural factory on a European scale. Located 5 minutes from Schiphol airport on one of the vast polder plots measuring 100 by 200 meters, Brutus is the flagship building of this new agricultural district. The museum of Dutch agriculture, a French fries factory, agribusiness offices, a tomato greenhouse, the faculty of sustainable agriculture of Wageningen University and various types of housing are horizontally stacked within this complex, but also banal system. Moving through these programs, visitors and occupants contemplate and participate in the different phases of production that take place inside the building but also in the domesticated nature surrounding it. The mechanism of Brutus reflects on the contemporary relationship between subject, food production, soil and architecture for its hyper-cartesian and urbanized realm.