Almere Urban Entertainment Center

Planned as a major leisure anchor in Almere’s new centre, the project belongs to a broader effort to make the reclaimed-city core dense, walkable and metropolitan in character. Its programme of entertainment uses gives it a public intensity that differs from ordinary commercial development. What matters architecturally is its role in concentrating activity and helping define the identity of the waterfront-centre ensemble. Even at the level of urban strategy, it shows how leisure architecture was used to give a young city a recognisable core.