Paper short abstract:

This paper describes negotiations on new architectures in the countryside in the Netherlands and analyses them against the backdrop of diverse concepts of rurality.

Paper long abstract:

In the Netherlands next to debates about deserted farms and the urgent need for assigning new functions to the farmhouses there is an ongoing discussion about new architectures in the countryside. On the one hand, it is about new modern agricultural buildings, which characterize the landscape for already some years and reflect the industrialization and the scaling up of farms.

On the other hand, it is about dwellings which can be described as neo-traditional. Cottages and stately homes are built which seem to originate from earlier centuries because of their outer appearance. The imaginations of rurality of the builders and dwellers are materialized in these buildings and one can track an intertwinement between representations and everyday realities in the countryside. The focus of this paper is on the debates about the buildings, in which different actors negotiate about imaginations and ideas about living in the countryside and the realities of daily life. Through the involvement of policymakers - like the Government Architect of The Netherlands or the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands - local discussions turn to transregional political negotiations about the rural.

The analysis of these negotiations gives insight in the different views on ruralities and rural life, the many layers of meaning and power hidden in the concept of rurality, the contrasts in it and the complexity of the ideas behind it.