Does the village still meaningfully function as a model in times of general urbanization? The history of architecture and urban design has not paid enough attention to the village. Nor has the contemporary architecture debate, which continues to be dominated by the avant-garde, urbanity, institutional building types and urban repurposing. Recently, however, the village has received more attention, partly because of the growing demand for spatial densification, climate challenges and biodiversity. There is a need for a qualitative approach to village densification in the Netherlands and Belgium as well as a growing interest in preserving and restoring the identity of villages and landscapes.
OASE 117 contributes to the debate on the architecture and urban design of villages, examining them not as the antithesis of modernity, but as its complex product. Eight essays analyse images, inventories, idealizations and makeovers of villages in the changing sociopolitical contexts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.