De Nieuwe Meent is a housing cooperative established in Amsterdam, designed to offer non-profit, self-managed, and affordable co-housing within the city’s restrictive property market. The initiative began in late 2018, conceived by a group of activists, architects, and scholars intent on creating a collectively owned residential building that would prioritise diversity, inclusion, and autonomy in its internal organisation.
Located in Watergraafsmeer on the Archimedesplantsoen plot, De Nieuwe Meent won its site through a municipal tender competition. The project aims for around fifty residents in a seven-storey building, which includes forty housing units—comprising both individual apartments and spaces for group living. Residents co-develop, co-design, and co-finance the building, which means they become members of the cooperative itself, with all major decisions made by consensus. The cooperative’s statutes ensure the building remains co-owned by its residents and cannot be sold, removing it from speculative market pressures.
The complex features a mix of private spaces and shared facilities, such as a communal garden, a workshop, an event space, and a shared kitchen. The structure is built using cross-laminated timber, integrating sustainability measures including high energy performance, a rooftop solar array, and geothermal heating.
De Nieuwe Meent explicitly aims for broad diversity; its recent resident selection process included targets for ethnic inclusion and focused commissions to encourage applications from underrepresented groups. The cooperative sustains its operations via crowdfunding and strives to serve those unable to access traditional social housing or ownership.