The new Rorik estate is located in the meadows between Beverwijk and Zaandam, right next to the A9 and under the flight path of Schiphol. To this end, 40 hectares of farmland have been transformed into a recreational area with a campsite, organic farming, a vineyard and an area for cultural festivals. All the buildings there are made of recycled materials.
The Mudship
There is the Modderschip, for example, a group accommodation with a blunt roof that towers high above the flat polder landscape. ‘The design is a mix of the North Holland farmhouses and the longhouses in which the Vikings lived. The settlement of Viking warrior Rorik once stood here,’ says architect Wouter Valkenier. ‘The load-bearing structure of the building, measuring 32 by 12 meters and 9 meters high, consists of one hundred and sixty beams from the old pigsties at this location. Bought from a demolition company further along the A9. The constructor calculated the maximum load based on the wood type and thickness.’
When hunting for materials, the construction drawing is leading, which can be challenging. ‘Just find enough sheet material for a wall of 30 metres, in the right size, too.’ As a result, there is often a need to improvise on the construction site. Opposite this are the ‘found gems’. Valkenier personally obtained a fireplace and beautiful stained glass windows from a demolition villa in Bergen. “Those are eye-catchers now.” Valkenier also heard that the doors of the former North Sea lock at Velsen could be picked up free of charge. They now function as the two entrance gates in the embankment with moat around Landgoed Rorik. “We just half dug it in.”
Building with recyclable materials is about four times cheaper, Valkenier estimates. Although these prices are also rising, due to urban mining, whereby materials are pre-sorted for reuse during demolition. ‘Demolitions and contractors now have their own web shop and a materials library.’ Only the roofing of the Mudship and the pipes are new. It is obvious that the materials used are given a second life. ‘The recycled material suits this natural landscape, which is also constantly changing.’
A ‘big tiny house’
Three years ago, Atse Hamers’ family sold his residential church in Beverwijk to ‘go all-in’ with the money on Landgoed Rorik. Hamers is now the manager of the campsite with ten discarded beach houses and a camping field. Hamers (42), Maartje van Vliet (42) and their children Lux (11) and Borre (8) live in a truck trailer that has been converted into a family home by Hamers. ‘That takes a lot of time and a little skill. Furthermore, it is mainly about learning from your mistakes’, says Hamers, who was trained as a sports teacher.
Hamers found all the materials on Marktplaats – from a discarded squash floor to free window frames, and in other words the trailer of a truck. ‘It has a wooden structure, so for 750 euros I already had a floor, walls and a roof.’ While building, Hamers designed his house. For example, he was able to buy 2 kilometers of discarded plinth wood, only part of which was usable. “Enough to cover the facade.” Now that the costs of building materials are skyrocketing, reuse is becoming more and more profitable. ‘It is not without reason that there is an enormous informal economy. Even broken tiles come to collect people to make a mosaic out of them.’
The camping manager estimates the total construction costs of his ‘big tiny house’ at around 25,000 euros. ‘New paint, insulation materials and solar panels are the largest cost item of these.’ Essential in his family home are really only the comfortable sofa for four and the glass sliding doors. ‘When it’s open, we’ll be in the largest back room in the Netherlands.’ They accept the average room temperature of 16 degrees. ‘The satisfaction of a house completely made by you compensates for a lot. Every old plank, every frame has a story.’
Roadhouse Mild Steel
Wegrestaurant Soft Steel is located in a 6 meter high glass greenhouse. The greenhouse was built for the Floriade as a meeting place. The organization had only forgotten to apply for a permit, which meant that the greenhouse had to be removed, says initiator Kasper Hoex (32). The brand new glass construction could be taken over from the greenhouse builder for a reasonable price. ‘But the greenhouse seems to have been made especially for us.’ The furniture comes from a school in Brussels. “Some chairs have a pecker scratched. But if you clean one chair, you have to clean them all. So we left those cocks in.’
Hoex, who followed an intermediate vocational education course in organic farming, supplies the vegetables for the restaurant himself. He is a pioneer in the Netherlands in the farm to fork-principle. In addition, Hoex delivers vegetable packages to one hundred and sixty households in the area every week for 8 euros per person. ‘That is roughly the price level of the organic supermarket. The composition of the packages depends on what the country produces.’
Hoex grows potatoes and onions on his field, his market garden produces herbs and dozens of cabbage and lettuce varieties. An orchard produces apples and pears. The food forest provides, among other things, nuts. He makes a meticulous annual cultivation plan for the composition of his more than forty crops. ‘Otherwise you have to dig, plow, harvest and fertilize in dozens of ways.’ Also, the crops should not oppress each other. ‘You should be able to eat from this polder all year round.’