Due to the success of the Information Center Making Almere (originally part of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 (IABR)), the Center will be prolonged until June 2013. Making Almere is about the way the New Town of Almere will transform in the future. In the 1970s, the city was on the drawing boards of several professional designers and planners—without any input from residents. Now, those roles are reversed. Today, the youngest city in the Netherlands is a leader in the development of a new form of urbanism: one where the inhabitants of Almere build their own city.

How is this shift constituted and what form do these urban developments take? The exhibition reveals the step-by-step development of Almere from a completely top-down planned city in the ’70s, up to the future image of Almere as a “testing ground of deregulation”, in which the relationship between the municipal government and the citizen is redefined. Visitors are also challenged to experiment with the future of Oosterwold in various ways, including a large, interactive model in the exhibition area.