living on water

Our last studio project forced us to examine design on a city scale. We were asked to design based on different conditions and many of my fellow classmates, including my fellow bloggers, chose incorporate the idea of flood into their designs. A relevant condition to discuss considering that in the last few years we have seen, on a global scale, many area’s ravished by flooding.
Coincidentally Ed Epp came to speak with our class on Thursday about his own research into flood architecture and touched on a few interesting projects that have been done.

Although my studio assignment did not touch on floods I think that the ideas behind flood architecture are quite logical. Designing based on the preexisting natural environment is something that is rarely implemented. More often than not we find ways to change the natural environment to accommodate our designs rather than the other way around.
Koen Olthuis of waterstudio is one of the most highly regarded experts on flood design. His design firm focuses exclusively on projects that are built on water instead of land and his work is both aesthetically pleasing and functional. His passion stems from growing up in the Netherlands where 1/3 of the country is actually below sea level, and complicated “levy” and pump systems have been implemented to keep the water out. Olthuis argues that instead of taking on the huge undertaking of keeping the water out, instead we should “make friends with the water”.

Many of waterstudio’s designs that have been realized are modern houseboats, but with commissions in Dubai and across Europe Olthuis’s concepts are certainly gaining ground, and rightfully so. With all this talk of global warming and climate change our landscapes are undoubtedly going to continue morphing. I feel like the time has come to stop fighting with what we already have and begin embracing it. As Olthuis has shown the technology and creativity is there, we just need to start using it.