ReGen Villages

A half-hour from Amsterdam, in the Oosterwold zone of Almere, sits a 25-hectare site set aside for a different kind of neighborhood. ReGen Villages B.V. wanted 203 homes that would supply their own power, water, and food, and treat their own wastewater. Except joined in 2017 to translate that ambition into a buildable plan, working as the masterplan, circular-metabolism, and urban and landscape designer, with EFFEKT as the architectural partner.

The integrated approach treats the neighborhood as a single closed-loop system rather than a collection of houses. Solar generation and storage feed the homes; rainwater is captured and filtered on site; greenhouses, orchards, and fields supply fresh produce; and helophyte filtration cleans grey and black water back into the surrounding landscape. Food waste cycles into on-site aquaculture, and the neighborhood is largely car-free.

Oosterwold is an experimental planning zone meant to give residents freedom to build sustainably. In practice, rules that limited connection between housing blocks made a genuinely integrated plan difficult. Except worked closely with the municipality to honor every rule while preserving the closed-loop design. The masterplan received planning permission in July 2018.

What makes it regenerative is the combination: a landscape tuned to rebuild biodiversity, clean air and water, and provide ecosystem services, woven directly into how people live. The plan stands as a blueprint for neighborhoods that power and feed themselves while improving the land they sit on.