STUDIO OSSIDIANA
A FLOATING PAVILION A FLOATING PAVILION AS TESTING GROUNDS FOR MUSEUM-TO-BE M. IN DUTCH NEW TOWN ALMERE The Dutch city of Almere was built on reclaimed land where once was the Zuiderzee: a shallow sea bay in the Netherlands. The first house in this planned New Town was completed in 1976. Since then, the city has grown to a population of nearly 220.000, which means Almere is well on its way to being the fifth-largest city in the country. However, Almere lacks a museum of note, befitting a city of such stature. Local, provincial, and national government administrators agreed that a museum should be on top of the priority list to raise the city’s appeal. Instead of establishing one immediately, it was decided to first experiment with a temporary art pavilion for immersive art with plenty of room to develop and test new ideas over the coming years. The museum-to-be was named M., claiming the first letter of its possible future destiny. In April, M.’s home base - a beautiful floating pavilion on the grounds of Floriade Expo 2022 – opened its doors. In the ingenious design by young duo Studio Ossidiana, there are numerous links to the history of Almere, a city rising from a former sea.
PIONEERING In early 2020, the municipality of Almere and the province of Flevoland invited five up-and-coming architects working at the intersection of architecture and visual arts to submit a design for
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