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 all the later polders, though it is usually applied less strictly. The Beemster Polder was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999.

Theme Aesthetics

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