Innovation & Concepts
In building on land developers and architects often revert to existing concepts and typologies. In as far as they exist at all, the current typologies for building on water are not satisfactory. Waterstudio is searching for new concepts and building methods for designing neighbourhoods and architecture that can convince municipalities and clients.
Exististing solutions for keeping water outside do not suffice anymore. The Netherlands must search for more dynamic instead of static solutions, whcih means that we have to learn to live with the water. The importance of this problem is acknowledged by the fact that the Dutch minister of the department of water-management has appointed fifteen areas in riverbeds for experiments. Some of these areas have dynamic water-management, in which the area and its furnishing should be water-resilient, and designed with special tools. Waterstudio is designing for this toolkit. New concepts are necessary that take the frequency and fluctuation of the waterlevel into account. For instance, Waterstudio distinguishes four concepts in dealing with water:
- lifted - a dwelling on piles;
- waterproof - a concept that is resistant to the presence water;
- sealed - dwellings isolated watertight;
- floating - the familiar floating house.