Silverline

Built on the edge of the Weerwater lake, the artificial lake at the heart of this sprawling, polynuclear polder town (translated: ‘again-water’- since Almere is built on reclaimed land…and after that, a new lake was planned), it contains 58 apartments, just outside Almere’s town centre, which, two decades after its construction, is undergoing a major transformation orchestrated by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture. The façade is made with aluminum cladding, like a tight skin -hence the name. The meander form reinforces the logo-like singularity of this building while at the same time catering to market practical demands: there are plenty of takers for the top and bottom levels, far fewer for the middle. The middle has therefore been reduced to a minimum and the top and foot maximized. An equally rigid logic informs the distribution of windows, which is a direct reflection of the rooms they serve. Each window is positioned symmetrically in the central axis of a room.