Visitors’ centre Oostvaardersplassen

Visitors’ centre Oostvaardersplassen. The Oostvaardersplassen is a nature reserve located between Almere and Lelystad, and twenty minutes from Amsterdam. This unique wilderness is well known amongst naturalists but relatively inaccessible and unfamiliar to the wider public. The number and type of visitors to the area is expected to increase greatly in the coming years.
In order to accommodate this increase while nurturing the natural assets Staatsbosbeheer decided to develop a new visitor centre. The new centre must provide activities, information and a physical introduction to the nature reserve.
This proposal interprets the site and the new centre as a series of linked ‘green rooms’. The first green room is a new threshold, a forested area accommodating entrance, parking, orientation points and themed nature activities. The new visitor centre straddles the boundary between the threshold zone and the wild landscape. The building has two sections, or rooms, which address the two landscapes. The rooms are linked under one roof. The covered open space between them functions at once as gateway, meeting place and entrance to the building and to the nature beyond. Paramount in the siting, form and materialisation of the building is that the building fits seamlessly into the sequence of green rooms. Services are as far as possible in the form of closed circuits. Passive and active solar gain is combined with ventilation servicing in an integrated climate system.

In collaboration with:  <a href=”http://www.niekroozen.com/” target=”_blank”>Niek Roozen Landscape Architects</a>