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How the combination of architecture and water can
stimulate creative processes and new insights. |
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The water is rising in the estimation of Dutch urban planners and architects. It used to be public enemy number one, but now the designers welcome water into their schemes with open sluices. Its popularity as a design element has never been greater. The web exhibition H2OLLAND Architecture with Wet Feet is a survey of the latest developments where water features in a significant way.
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Ideas
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Designing for a dynamic environment as opposed to a static one calls for new concepts and ideas. The working territory of the waterproof architect is still undefined and gradually taking shape through the plans and ideas of innovative designers. Waterproof Architecture has the potential to change the face of watery Holland.
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Urban Planning
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Dutch town and country planning was long dictated by the battle against the element of water. Protest against draining of the Markerwaard was a turning point in the spatial planning. Architects have backed the trend to bring water back into the countryside and the cities with some radical plans.
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Water Dwellings
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water dwellings
The revival of interest in living at the waterside and on water to some extent continues an old tradition. More and more Dutch water dwellings stand not just within sight of water but right in it, on piles in the water. The most striking innovations are to be seen in houseboats.
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Working on water
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Places of work sited in the vicinity of water are considered very attractice. The development of new forms of building like more intensive land utilization, floating real estate offices and IFD make inventive use of the available surface water.
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Engineering Works
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Besides flood prevention measures, countless engineering works are needed in a country so abounding in water as the Netherlands - tunnels and bridges where roads intersect with waterways, locks to cope with height differences and facilities to control waterborne traffic.
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Crossing Water
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The Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam, 1996, set a major precedent in the design tradition of Dutch transport and waterway engineering. It opened the way for a new generation of civil engineering constructions in which architectural symbolism and expressiveness are no longer subordinate to structural pragmatics.
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Leisure and Culture
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The burgeoning economy of the Netherlands in the 1990s was parallelled by an unprecedented expansion in the leisure industry. Modern holiday villages have been built on the banks of rivers and the country has been deluged with new museums and other cultural buildings that are surrounded by water or even float on it.
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