waterstudio Archives - Page 21 of 79

What would an entirely flood-proof city look like?

By Sophie Knight
The Guardian
Sept.25.2017

They call it “pave, pipe, and pump”: the mentality that has dominated urban development for over a century.

Along with the explosion of the motorcar in the early 20th century came paved surfaces. Rainwater – instead of being sucked up by plants, evaporating, or filtering through the ground back to rivers and lakes – was suddenly forced to slide over pavements and roads into drains, pipes and sewers.

Their maximum capacities are based on scenarios such as 10-year storms. And once they clog, the water – with nowhere else to go – simply rises.

The reality of climate change and more frequent and intense downpours has exposedthe hubris of this approach. As the recent floods from Bangladesh to Texas show, it’s not just the unprecedented magnitude of storms that can cause disaster: it’s urbanisation.

Hurricane Harvey displaced more than one million people, resulted in at least 44 deaths and damaged 185,000 homes in Houston alone
The US National Weather Service said the “breadth and intensity” of the rainfall that came with Hurricane Harvey in late August was “catastrophic”, and “beyond anything experienced before” – the city was overwhelmed with devastating speed, as can happen in areas where much of the land is paved.

A recent survey of global city authorities carried out by the environmental non-profit CDP found 103 cities were at serious risk of flooding.

With climate change both a reality and threat, many architects and urbanists are pushing creative initiatives for cities that treat stormwater as a resource, rather than a hazard.

Permeable pavements: Chicago’s ‘green alleys’

One city already preparing for a climate future – or present – is Chicago, parts of which saw almost 20cm of rain in four days this July. It is projected to have 40% more winter precipitation by the end of this century.

The city has poured significant investment into reimagining stormwater management over the last decade, including building more than 100 “Green Alleys” – permeable pavement that allows stormwater to filter through and drain into the ground – built since 2006.

It’s very simple, but it’s very difficult for people to grasp, because we’ve not designed like that in a century

Jay Womack
The most advanced is the two-mile “sustainable streetscape” across Cermak Rd and Blue Island Ave in Pilsen, in Chicago’s Lower West Side. Once a crumbling asphalt strip inclined to flood, today it is “the greenest street in America”: a $15m showcase for cutting-edge ecological technologies such as photocatalytic cement to reduce smog and landscaped shallow troughs known as bioswales, which act as environmentally-friendly drainage, filtering and absorb polluted water.

On the Pilsen Sustainable Street, rainwater travels through the sidewalk to porous rock, where it is decontaminated by microbes. It then goes onto feed surrounding plants, or it filters through sand deep in the ground to make its way back to Lake Michigan.

Rainwater travels through the self-cleaning, pollution-reducing sidewalk before going on to feed surrounding plants
In this way, 80% of rainfall is diverted from the sewage system, and the road no longer floods, says Jay Womack, a senior landscape architect at Huff & Huff, which was commissioned to design the street.

“We try to create porosity and permeability so that water can move in the ways that it moves in the hydrological cycle,” says Womack. “It’s very simple, but it’s very difficult for people to grasp, because we’ve not designed like that in a century.”

Sponge cities: a new model for China

Lessons from Chicago are being applied in China, where the government has commissioned the construction of 16 “Sponge Cities” to pilot solutions for the freshwater scarcity and flooding suffered in many cities as a result of rapid urbanisation. Chicago architectural firm UrbanLab was commissioned to design the masterplan for Yangming Archipelago in Hunan province: a new centre within the larger city of Changde, devised as a “new model for the future”.

Changde’s ‘Eco-Boulevard’, in dry conditions (left) and wet (right)
The area, a low-lying land river basin that experiences heavy rainfall, is regularly flooded. Instead of incorporating defences against water, UrbanLab put space for it to flow at the centre of its urban plan, putting major buildings on islands in an enormous central lake. Canal-lined streets that UrbanLab call “Eco-boulevards” connect the eight districts – the process is visualised in this video.

UrbanLab says their vision combines a dense metropolis with a nature setting: “As a functional center, Yangming Archipelago will serve as an urban model, we expect it to lead the way to a new way of thinking about the city of the future.”

Coastal corridors: no more ‘holding the line’

With 2.5 million residents of New York and New Jersey currently living within a designated flood zone, the Tri-State Region of the US is already vulnerable to flooding, and the outlook will only deteriorate with rising sea levels.

A cross-discipline team was commissioned by the Regional Plan Association and the Rockefeller Foundation to devise a response to the pressure put on the region’s coastlines within 50 years and six feet of sea-level rise.

The aerial map above shows flooding in New Mastic in 2050 and, on the right, in New Mastic in 2050 after the proposed future development. Development on high, dry ground would be densified while homes in wet areas would evolve into a new elevated neighbourhood, built along docks.

They proposed freezing future development on flood plains in favour of focusing new housing in the neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and New Jersey along “corridors” and transit spines inland on higher ground.

The team reimagined The Bight, the notch in the region’s coast where ocean currents pile sand, as a new “landscape economic zone” that would blur the hard line between the city and the sea and create new spaces for habitation, conservation, work and play.

These cross-sections show how Segal and Drake’s team envisage buildings could exist on the shifting threshold of water and land. Click on the images to expand and see more detail
“Rather than futilely trying to hold the line, the zone’s mantra is ‘receive, protect, adapt’,” said Segal and Drake.

Per their vision, the coastline would be transformed into “the new urban frontier” with a vanishing barrier island at Sea Bright, NJ, by 2030; a retirement walkable community at Mastic Beach in NY by 2050; and New York City’s “new sunken central park” at Jamaica Bay by 2067.

Berms with benefits: a barrier with bike lanes and BRT too

The stakes of failing to adapt to flood risk were made clear by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which caused the deaths of 147 people and cost the US more than $50bn in damage.

One of the worst-affected areas was Meadowlands in New Jersey, a low-lying wetland basin bisected by the Hackensack river.

During the hurricane it was impossible to pump out water because of tidal flooding on the other side of the dike, and the area was devastated: houses filled with water, cars floated away, residents had to be rescued with boats, and critical infrastructure failed.

Kristian Koreman, a co-founder of ZUS, a Rotterdam-based architectural practice, says development had failed to take into account the local ecology.

“By neglecting the fact that they were building in a swamp, they forgot that it was a tidal area,” he says. “You can see that the water goes up and down every day, but with a real storm like Sandy, and a tidal flood plus heavy rain, water came from all sides and there was no way to escape that.”

By neglecting the fact that they were building in a swamp, they forgot that it was a tidal area

Kristian Koreman
In response to Sandy, ZUS partnered with MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism and De Urbanisten to devise New Meadowlands: a masterplan for combining flood resilience with recreational amenities through marshes and a system of parallel raised banks called berms. (The aerial rendering is shown at the top of this article.)

Between the outer berm and the sea, the restored wetlands would soak up seawater and slow down tidal waves, preventing them from hitting the dikes at high speed. The stretch of berms would serve as a wildlife refuge, filling up with rainwater during periods of heavy rain before draining out. And on the insider of the inner berm, ditches and ponds would retain rainwater, preventing it from causing sewers to overflow.

The first pilot project will focus on the towns of Little Ferry, Moonachie and Carlstadt, with $150m in funding from the US Department Housing and Urban Development.

Given the triple whammy of climate change, increasing urbanisation and budget constraints, infrastructure projects now have to serve multiple purposes: Koreman says the team were under pressure to deliver the most value per dollar possible.

Their plan includes a huge recreation zone, as well as bike lanes and a rapid transit bus lane running across the top of the berms to better connect Meadowlands to New York. ZUS sees its design as “berms with benefits”.

Floating pods – and beyond

Koen Olthuis, the founder of Waterstudio, a Dutch architectural practice that builds exclusively floating and amphibious structures, believes the way to encourage flood resilience is to make sure it’s almost overshadowed by those other benefits.

Olthuis is trying to improve living standards in waterside slums by providing vital functions such as education, sanitation and power in floating shipping containers built on foundations made of thousands of waste plastic bottles. He calls the units “city apps” as they are easy to install and launch. Since they can be moved, they can be granted a temporary licence by city governments that normally prohibit development in illegal settlements; and because they float, they entice investors who would ordinarily shy from investing in a flood plain.

A City App used as a classroom
The first major project is in Korail, a slum on the waterside in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where five units will be arriving in October: a classroom, a sanitation unit, a kitchen and a battery pack connected to a floating solar field.

Olthuis says he works with nature, rather than treating it as a threat – which means letting water flow where it wants, and using floods as a catalyst for more flexible urban development. He talks of relieving crowding in cities by building amphibious architecture on flood plains, or augmenting a city with pop-up floating structures on waterways – concert halls, stadiums, even rescue and relief units during disasters.

“For us,” he says, “it’s the wetter, the better.”

Click here to view the article on the source website

CLick here to view the article in pdf

What It Takes to Make a Brand New Island

By Erin Block
Travel+Leisure
Sept.2017
Photo Credits:Waterstudio

Koen Olthuis is convinced that nature always has a way of finding balance in our world: It is an equalizer and a force that can undo any disruption. The Earth is a healer and a blessing. No matter how abusive and destructive our species becomes, Mother Earth forgives and finds a way.

As the principal architect at Waterstudio.NL in the Netherlands, Olthuis constructed his vision around the collaboration of man and nature. For years, he tried to execute architecture that worked together with nature’s path instead of against it.

Now, he is among the first, along with developer Dutch Docklands, to create floating islands and homes in the Maldives that are meant for humans, but are also lifelines for the ocean and species below.

The Maldives, located in the Indian Ocean, are the lowest lying island chain and archipelago in the world — most of the country is only about three feet above sea level. It is the flattest country on Earth, and consists of 1,190 tiny islands built entirely on coral reefs. The coral reefs provide the majority of marine diversity and sustain the islands.

The islands are expected to be the first victims of climate change: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that if we don’t take action on climate change in the next five to 10 years, sea level will rise by up to four feet by the end of the century.

A nation is on the brink of extinction, but Olthuis’s philosophy is a spark in an otherwise dark maze for the Maldivian people. It’s just the beginning and it’s taken Olthuis a lifetime to get here.

Amillarah, Floating Island, The Maldives

Courtesy of Dutch Docklands
In 2003 Olthuis, also known as the “Floating Dutchman,” was working on floating houseboats in the Netherlands. As an architecture and industrial design expert in Holland who spent his life studying the architecture of water, this was a natural progression for him. Holland has around 16,000 floating structures and, by all accounts, one of the most robust histories of floating homes. Soon, Olthuis began working on multiple boats as owners commissioned him to bolt a rigid, concrete foundation connecting the vessels to create larger and larger habitable spaces.

He spent his time learning building codes and taking in the nuances of underwater design. His designs became so glamorous and so large that he began getting attention from architecture experts and fanatics for a different type of project, man-made islands, more specifically floating islands.

Up until recently there was only one way to make an island: dredging the sea floor to create new land and coastlines. The Palm Islands, built in 2014, in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Dubai, United Arab Emirates are the most famed example of this.

The Palm Islands, though a spectacular feat of human innovation, pose significant environmental and logistical challenges. Only a few years after the Palm Islands were built, there were reports of erosion: The islands seemed to be sinking back into the water. What’s more, the maintenance of these islands could mean severe consequences for the surrounding ecosystem.

Private Watervilla, The Netherlands

Courtesy of Dutch Docklands
“Unfortunately this has dire consequences for neighboring coral reefs as it increases the turbidity of the water, buries entire habitats, and can lead to their direct, albeit incidental, removal,” said Dr. Andrew Bruckner, the director and lead scientist of Coral Reef CPR.

“The dredging also alters natural current and water circulation patterns and can cause unnecessary erosion in areas upcurrent or downcurrent from the construction site. Many islands repeat this dredging process annually as the monsoon switches direction.”

The idea of a floating island was new for Olthuis. Translating your work from houseboats to living, breathing worlds is not a step that happens overnight. The transition came in 2008: The Maldivian people elected President Mohammed Nasheed, who pledged to keep the Maldives from the threat of climate change, the rising sea levels from melting polar icecaps and a warming planet.

Nasheed had a strong message: His country is sinking. The population of almost 370,000 could either become climate change refugees, or they could be climate change innovators.

Pinpointing the moment houseboats became floating islands is hard for Olthuis to remember, but the idea of helping to continue a culture started something. He met with President Nasheed and a new era began. Building and maintaining islands that are sustainable and eco-friendly could preserve both the integrity and the livelihood of the Maldives.

Olthuis began to work out the logistics and created a prototype that could be assembled in Holland, taken apart, shipped to a new location and then reassembled.

Floating islands are reassembled in underwater lagoons. The foundations can be concrete, steel or composite, depending on size and location, and are anchored with a strong cable, so they can move about a meter in each direction as needed. Though there is movement, springs are used as a stabilization tool, so standing on the surface feels as cemented as any other natural land mass. There is a flat, smooth surface underneath with no curved edges, so marine life can thrive. Through extensive research and trails, Olthuis found that round and pyramid shapes promote the most growth.

Amillarah, Private Island, The Maldives

Courtesy of Dutch Docklands
For a long time, most underwater architects focused only on the ecosystem on the surface of the island or structure. It was about making the environment as lush and as beautiful as possible, but it wasn’t the whole picture.

It took Olthuis until 2011 to realize that it was not just about the beauty of the surface — it runs deeper. Following the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain, Olthuis received a question in the audience from a journalist. Olthuis had just finished describing a new project that consisted of floating buildings with green landscapes throughout. The journalist raised his hand and asked, “Can an architect only design for people?”

This question completely changed the course of Olthuis’ life. He rethought the role of an architect, considering the responsibility and obligation to enhance the surrounding environment. His company, Waterstudio.NL, now leads with the motto, “green is good, blue is better.”

“Now, for each location you try and find out as much as possible about the current ecosystem and what you could possibly need to enhance the marine life: How to locally clean the water and what shapes make the flow of water flow naturally underneath it,” said Olthuis.

It’s about making the islands work, but not just for humans. In the past, Olthuis worked with pontoon boats in Holland to find ways to get rid of the underwater ecosystem that could chip away at the hull of a boat, but now his whole world was upside down.

“Floating islands don’t move,” said Olthuis said. “You want as much algae and shells to grow underneath these islands. We talk a lot with these experts about how they can make algae make it grow on these hulls. It’s reverse thinking.”

In August 2016, Olthuis and developer Dutch Docklands received a license to test their first island in the Maldives. They have a 100-year lease in a section of the Indian Ocean just outside the Maldivian island chain to test their floating islands. The first will be assembled and built by October 2017.

By 2019, Dutch Docklands will have invested millions of dollars and intends to have first 50 islands intact. Within the next decade, the company expects to have a total of 100 small islands.

The project was originally planned for August 2017, but, as Olthuis puts it, new clients mean new expectation. “Our clients are even more green than we are,” said Olthuis. “Our clients want to be completely off the grid. It was a challenge to make the change and develop, but we’re back on track.”

Dutch Docklands only commissioned the building of private islands known as Amillarah, which are to be sold to individuals through Christie’s in New York City. But, the technology can and should extend to create sustainable and environmentally friendly bio-reserves and new land for a culture that is sinking.

“This is just the beginning,” said Jasper Mulder, vice president of Dutch Docklands. “We will let the commercial project show that the construction can work and then work with the government to help the local community.”

If Dutch Docklands moves forward with floating islands as a social project, it is just one example of how humans, the market for luxury and sustainable products and the environment can all come to together to create a remarkable new beginning. Man may be able to have what we want and need without abusing our environment.

“In general, environmental impacts associated with the floating islands are likely to be much less severe than that associated with the continued land reclamation and dredging,” Dr. Bruckner said. “The creators behind this idea have given the environment significant forethought by placing these islands in areas that are likely to have the lowest environmental impact possible.”

Though hope for a sustainable, environmentally friendly option for the Maldivian people is strong, we still don’t know what the long-term effects will be.

“They are proposing to place these within lagoonal areas away from coral reefs. This does minimize the shading of reef systems, however it is likely to have a significant impact to these shallow lagoonal areas that provide critical nursery areas,” Dr. Bruckner continued. He is also concerned about what Dutch Docklands is proposing to do with sewage produced, as these are located within the lagoon, and discharge of sewage into the lagoon will seriously impact surrounding habitats through increased nutrients, and subsequent algal blooms. Olthuis has no concerns about the leftover sewage, however: He plans to treat the sewage water and use it promote plant and brush growth. The remaining sewage will be removed from the island on a monthly basis.

Until the floating surface is created, we won’t know its true impact on the surrounding environment, but both Dr. Bruckner and Olthuis agree that working with and for nature could be the answer.

Back in 2007, when Olthuis was not involved in the fate of this island nation, before his mission became designing islands underwater and above, he was asked to create a lush landscape and environment for Villa New Water, a residential property in Naaldwijk, The Netherlands. As a new architect and planner he believed the secret to success was to plan and organize every detail of a project. It had to be perfect.

In the midst of New Water’s production, he to visited a local friend who kept an unruly yet beautiful garden. Somehow the garden managed to heal itself through its chaotic patterns. It looked breathtaking compared to the typical residential garden, and Olthuis realized perfection was not natural — and his best work would be one guided by nature’s decisions.

To this day, the garden’s layout and idiosyncrasies stays with Olthuis. He believes nature always find an equilibrium, in spite of the human race.

“That is the point of these floating islands,” Olthuis said. “We’ll build the canvas and nature will fill it out.”

Click here to view the article at the source website

Click here to view the article in pdf

6 Modular Houseboat and Floating Home Manufacturers Around the World

By Michele Koh Morollo
Dwell
Sept.20.2017

If you’re bored of solid ground and want to try out a life on water, then these international companies will give you the tools you need to create your own floating home someplace new.
Take a look at the following six manufacturing companies across the globe that specialize in floating home design—and make sure to do your research to figure out all the pros, cons, rules, and regulations for this type of living.

No 1 Living – Czech Republic

Based in the Czech Republic, No 1 Living builds houseboats with an upper and lower deck and glazed interiors that take advantage of outdoor views. Founded in 2013, they offer two models of houseboats: the No1 Living 40-foot model and the larger No1 Living 47-foot model. Both are equipped with a kitchen, full bathroom, bedrooms, and generous storage space. The houses are built with durable, anticorrosion-protected steel and polyethylene-segmented floats, which guarantee excellent floatation.
Courtesy of No 1 Living

French company Farea manufactures floating homes that are certified as boats. This is important in France, as it means the houses are allowed in lakes, lagoons, and at sea. They’re about 915 square feet each and come with five twin cabins, three terraces, and a kitchen. The structures can produce their own water and electricity and are packaged in a 40-foot-long transportable container for international shipments.
Courtesy of Farea

With a background in engineering and technologically-advanced water leisure devices and equipment, Go Friday can help you plan and design a modular floating home that’s not only beautiful, but also environmentally sustainable and energy efficient. Their designs have a fixed width of approximately 20 feet and lengths that range from 32.8 to 59 feet. The shorter options are ideal for cozy studios, while longer options can fit three bedrooms.
Courtesy of Jose Campos Photography

SM Ponton – Slovakia

SM Ponton is a Slovakia-based designer and producer of modular, floating pontoon bases for houseboats and floating homes. Constructed with a reinforced-concrete structure that ensures maintenance-free durability and a Styrofoam core that makes the vessels unsinkable, the modules are connected together to form a rigid pontoon platform using locks at the mooring place. Architects and designers can then confidently build their homes on top of this platform.
Courtesy of Katarína Bako

Deutsche Composite – Germany

German manufacturers Deutsche Composite GmbH patented the composite construction material called RexWall, a lightweight construction concept that they’ve used in floating structures for more than a decade. Using RexWall sandwich panels, their Propeta series of houseboats are motored and fully licensed for cruising, and can weather waves, tidal changes, and frost. Interior fittings can be customized. The larger model called the Propeta P12, which is close to 40 feet long, can comfortably fit up to 10 beds.
Courtesy of Deutsche Composite GmbH

Waterstudio.Nl – the Netherlands

About 90 percent of the world’s largest cities are located along waterfronts. Koen Olthuis of Dutch architectural firm Waterstudio.NL believes that with climate change leading to drastic rises in sea levels, we’ll need to rethink how we live with water in the built environment. His team has designed sophisticated floating homes like Watervilla De Hoef and Watervilla IJburg in the Netherlands, and is working on masterplans for floating apartments, social housing developments, and even cities.
Courtesy of Pieter Kers

Click here to view the article at the source website

Click here to view the article in pdf

Treib gut!

By Pier F
Festival-Ausgabe
Sept. 2017

Click here to view the article in pdf

Oceans of opportunity

CLADmag
from Cladbook2017
Issue 3.2016
PhotoCredits: Waterstudio

Koen Olthuis has been touting the benefits of floating cities for years – and now people are starting to take notice

A number of high-profile projects have recently brought attention to Koen Olthuis’s approach to living on water. Those include the floating Citadel apartment block in the Netherlands and important large-scale leisure projects such as luxury private islands in Dubai, floating hotels and resorts in the Maldives and a snowflake-shaped hotel off Norway. The potential for floating architecture, Olthuis says, goes far beyond one-off developments: it’s an urban planning tool.
“For the past 15 years, I’ve been designing these floating structures,” says Olthuis, who established his design firm Waterstudio in 2003. “When I started, all the other architects thought I was crazy, but now this approach is starting to be adopted by developers. We’re also talking to governments around the world about how floating developments can upgrade and improve their cities.” The big picture in all this, according to Olthuis, is that extending cities beyond the waterfront and indeed further out to sea reduces the pressure on overpopulated urban areas – where 70 per cent of people will live by 2050 – and offers flexible solutions for problems thrown up by rising sea levels and climate change.

How do floating structures work at a city level?
Governments worldwide are looking at how floating developments can improve their cities. I propose a system of modular floating developments – floating urban components that add a particular function to the existing grid of a city. With this system, any question a city asks can be answered immediately. If a city needs parking, bring in floating parking. If it has green issues, bring in floating parks and Sea Trees [Waterstudio’s offshore green structures]. The system is responsive to the needs of dynamic urban communities.

Is floating architecture the way forward for urban living?
It’s project to product. You’ll be able to order buildings in, and sell or lease buildings you don’t want or need. We’ve only explored a fraction of the possibilities, but in the next 10 to 15 years, more and more architecture will start to explore the possibilities of floating developments and it will grow from something that’s a fringe architecture to something that’s mainstream. The stupid thing is that we live in dynamic communities and yet we build static structures. With rapidly changing social structures and technologies, we need flexible cities. I’m not saying we have to build floating cities, but that every city that is next to the water should have at least 5 per cent of its buildings on the water. That would create flexibility.
It’s not the only way, but it’s something that is inevitable. It’s about rethinking and finding solutions for major problems.

What other advantages are there?
We believe green is good but blue is better. Water provides many tools to make more durable and sustainable cities. You have water cooling for the buildings, you have flexibility, you have buildings that rise and fall with the water level, you don’t have to demolish a building that’s no longer needed because you can repurpose it or even sell it. People, developers and politicians are starting to see that this is something that brings in money and solves problems. It’s a feasible way to build better cities.

What do you mean by flexibility?
I don’t mean that you’ll be able to take your house and move to another city or another neighbourhood. I mean flexibility on a larger scale, where cities and urban planners are able to move a complete neighbourhood half a mile or bring in temporary floating functions – like stadiums – and use them for one or two years before they leave for another city. This large-scale flexibility makes sense. Take the Olympic Games. It’s so strange that every four years we build so many hotels and stadiums and only use them for a few weeks. Imagine if as a city you could just lease these floating functions from a developer. Cities who don’t have as much money as London or Rio or Beijing could also host these types of events because it would cost much less money.

Is it something you can foresee happening in the near future ?
Yes, maybe not with stadiums – because we can put them up easily – but with the hotel business, certainly. Qatar has the World Cup in 2022 and they need 35,000 hotel rooms for that event. But if they built 35,000 hotel rooms, within 10 years they’d be empty. So they’re thinking about using cruise ships. As the harbour facility is not big enough, they’re also thinking about the idea of fl oating harbours, or fl oating cruise terminals – something that can facilitate these cruise ships for a few weeks, and then a: er that you can bring the fl oating harbours to another location.

Can you tell us about Amillarah Private Islands?
Yes. With OQYANA Real Estate Company and developers Dutch Docklands, 33 private islands are being built as part of The World Islands project in Dubai. The islands are being sold by Christie’s International Real Estate, with a starting price of US$10m. It’s a really high-end project. The fl oating islands look like tropical islands covered in trees, but in fact they’re more like superyachts. They’re built in Holland and then moved to the location in Dubai and anchored there. They are self-su5cient with their own electricity and their own water. Within the next 10 years there’ll be more development around them, so we’re making it look like its own archipelago. If you fly over, it looks like a series of green islands. OQYANA has a masterplan around Amillarah that includes shops, hotels and all kinds of leisure architecture. This is just the first step of the development, but the beauty of this floating architecture is that it moves very fast. Once you’ve built the islands you can just tow them in and connect them to the boKom, either with cables or telescopic piles and they’re ready. Compare that to the manmade islands at The World. There’s still very liKle built there. It’s di5cult to get labour there, di5cult to build the right foundations and there’s no electricity or water, so developers don’t know how to build there without losing money.

Have any been sold?
Not yet. We’ll have an island there, like a show home, from December this year (2016). With the history of the property market in Dubai, it’s beKer to have the first islands there so people can have a look and understand what it’s all about, especially at the prices people pay in this type of market. I should add that if I only ever build floating islands for the rich then I’m doing something wrong. The start of this story for me was to create a new tool for cities that are facing urbanisation, overpopulation and climate change – and also for cities that need to brand themselves to aKract inhabitants. As well as being able to answer these big, fast-changing urban problems, these floating structures bring a certain character and appeal to a city – a USP.

Why does your concept appeal to resort or hotel developers?
On water, leisure architecture, including resorts and hotels, has the possibility to change. You can adapt and create functions that are not only moveable but also transformative through time, for instance, through the seasons. With seasonal structures you can open up the buildings in the summer, make buildings more dense or more spread out. You can add functions or take them away. To me, it’s one big playing field and we’re trying to work out what it means for the future of leisure architecture and real estate, not just how these things will look, but the economic eUects too.

What kind of economic benefits might there be?
A project we started working on a few years ago was a floating hotel and conference centre for the Maldives – the Greenstar. As well as answering fast-changing urban problems, floating structures bring a certain character to a city – a USP The star-shaped hotel has five legs, each with 80 rooms inside, but instead of building five legs, we build six. One of these legs will stay in a harbour in India. In five or seven years time, when the hotel needs refurbishing, you bring the sixth leg to the hotel and connect it, sending the others one by one to be renovated. The hotel doesn’t need to shut down, and the work can be carried out where it’s easy and cost-eBective to get the materials and labour to do it.

What other projects are you working on?
We’re working in the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Oman, exploring the potential of ecotourism. We’re looking at building satellite resorts for land-sited hotels, that float out at sea where there are coral reefs or mangroves. Floating resorts don’t leave any scars on the environment – they’re scarless developments, which can even have a positive eBect on the environment. For example, we work with marine engineers and environmentalists to help build floating structures that aKract underwater life. In places like Dubai, it’s so hot that it’s very
diLcult to create the right environment for fish and marine life, but the shade of these floating islands can provide a starting point for new marine ecosystems. We’re also working with master developer Dutch Docklands and the Maldivean government on the ongoing Five Lagoons Ocean Flower resort and residences. Finally, we’re looking at developing cities that face troubles with the environment, density and infrastructure – and seeing how water can be part of that solution.

What are the challenges?
Progress on Norway’s Krystall Hotel is slow because of laws that prevent building on the shoreline. Regulations and laws can be a hurdle, and may need to be changed to adapt to floating architecture. But, we are slowly moving to a marketplace where these floating developments are accepted. There’s a bright future for this technology.

Slum Schools
Waterstudio has been pioneering the concept of floating facilities that can be moored at waterside slum communities anywhere in the world. City Apps are floating developments based on a standard sea-freight container. City Apps can be established in water where there is scarcity of space and can be used to upgrade sanitation, housing and communication installations. The first City App, a floating school, is being built for a slum in Dhaka. “One billion people live in slums worldwide and half of them are close to the water. We can use City Apps to instantly improve the quality of life there,” says Olthuis. Because governments see these as temporary solutions, it’s much easier to get permission to do this than to build a facility on land.

Click here for the full article

Are These Dutch Floating Homes a Solution for Rising Seas?

By Olga Mecking
Citylab
August.23.2017

Houseboats have long been a common sight near Amsterdam, but a new community may signal a premise that could work elsewhere, too.

Not far from Amsterdam’s Central Station lies IJburg. Hidden in plain view, the city’s newest district is somewhat of an undiscovered secret. In fact, IJburg is known better to the people outside of the country rather than the ones who actually live in the Netherlands.
Moriam Hassan Balogun, who is originally from the United Kingdom, moved there in 2009 and now considers herself an “international local.” She loves IJburg’s family friendly atmosphere, the space, and the many cafes and possibilities for work and leisure. It also attracts many business owners and mostly people with liberal political views.

IJburg is built on four artificial islands that are connected to each other and the rest of the city via bridges. It has around 21,000 inhabitants, the first of whom moved there in early 2002. But the district still isn’t completely built. Though the goal was to finish building IJburg by 2012, that has not happened due to environmental concerns and slow uptake of houses. When finished, it will offer 18,000 homes for 45,000 people and create around 12,000 jobs.

Of late, the islands have been of particular interest to climate change researchers; in particular, the area of Waterbuurt West. There, 120 floating homesteads have been built to deal with Amsterdam’s housing shortage and to prevent the citizens of Amsterdam from moving farther away, to Purmerend or Almere—a phenomenon known as urban sprawl. Living on water is not that surprising in a country that’s surrounded by it. All over the Netherlands, people live on barges or houseboats. But these new houses in IJburg are different because they are very visibly not boats. They are houses.A Dutch saying goes, “God created the world but the Dutch created Holland.” The Netherlands has long been a pioneer in reclaiming land from water, spending centuries drying out the sea to build. That may have been a mistake, says Koen Olthuis, the founder of the Waterstudio in Rijswijk, an architectural bureau specifically devoted to designing buildings on water.

“The Dutch are crazy, that’s fun about the Dutch. We are here now in a part of Holland where we shouldn’t be. It’s man-made,” Olthuis says. A much better solution would be to simply build floating houses, or even whole floating neighborhoods instead.The technology used to build houses on water is not really new. Whatever can be built on land can also be built on water. The only difference between a house on land and a floating house is that the houses on water have concrete “tubs” on the bottom, which are submerged by half a story and act as counter-weight. To prevent them from floating out to sea, they are anchored to the lakebed by mooring poles.

As sea levels are rising globally, many cities around the world are under threat from water. Some areas are projected to disappear completely in the next few decades. Therefore, designing houses to float may, in some instances, be safer than building on land and risking frequent floods. “In a country that’s threatened by water, I’d rather be in a floating house; when the water comes, [it] moves up with the flood and floats,” Olthuis says. He believes that water shouldn’t be considered an obstacle, but rather a new ingredient in the recipe for the city.
Floating houses are not only safer and cheaper, but more sustainable as well. Because such a house could more readily be adapted to existing needs by changing function, or even moving to a whole new location where it can serve as something else, the durability of the building is much improved. Olthuis compares this to a second-hand car: “By having floating buildings, you’re no longer fixed to one location. You can move within the city, or you can move to another city, and let them be used and used again.”

Houses built on land are very static, while on water it’s possible to add, take away, or easily change parts. And communities built on water can be constructed more densely, which would allow for more efficient energy use. Water allows houses (and even whole cities) more flexibility, and, for Olthuis, it’s this characteristic that makes it such a fascinating element.

“In a country that’s threatened by water, I’d rather be in a floating house.”
He sees the use and incorporation of water as the next logical step in the evolution of cities. Cities are not unlike brands, and the ones with a lot of water would be the most flexible, and therefore the most desirable. This branding is already visible in many regions around the world: Think of Los Angeles as the city of movies, New York as the city for writers. Blue cities, or cities that can utilize the water, would also be the cities that would attract residents.

But Olthuis goes one step further. He imagines cities that can quickly change, depending, for example, on the season. In the summer, they could be open to allow the collection of sun energy, and in the winter they could huddle closer together for warmth and energy preservation. He also prefers to talk about functions, or modules, rather than actual buildings.

“In the next city, it’s no longer about what you have; it’s about what you can load. You’re going to load functions to your neighborhood on the water, and if you need new functions, you take them out and you reload them with other profiles,” he imagines. Cities of the future will share certain functions, like, for example, museums, stadiums, or other facilities. “It will be a completely new way of thinking about these [establishments].”

Incorporating water into the cities will also introduce more equality, says Olthuisk, referring to a principle known as “the democracy of water.” In fact, something similar is already happening not just in IJburg but in the whole of the Netherlands, where house owners and social housing recipients share neighborhoods. In IJburg itself, around 30 percent of the houses are earmarked for this very form of government assistance. People of various nations, races, religions, and ethnicities live on the island. “There’s no group that’s more than the other,” Hassan Balogun says. However, the people who move to IJburg tend to be politically similar. “There’s quite a lot of liberal thinkers, very open-minded people here. I think that like seeks like,” she says. The residents of IJburg often vote for D66 and Groenlinks parties, both known for their liberal views and a focus on sustainability.

A floating home in Ijburg. (Margriet Faber/AP)
The inhabitants of IJburg don’t really have the need to leave the island unless they want to. There are plenty of options in that part of the city, including cafes, gyms, yoga studios, and parks. There are also 10 schools. The whole area has an atmosphere of newness, of opportunity.

And this opportunity—the concept of floating houses—could spread to other areas around the world. Due to very strict regulations in the Netherlands, Olthuis is often exporting his ideas abroad, including to China, the United Arab Emirates, India, and the Ukraine. He recognizes that American cities face the same threat towns in the Netherlands did: urban sprawl. “So we have to bring the cities back, make them more compact,” he says. “That’s what I hope that people in the States will learn.”

Floating houses are an idea American cities should consider not just to combat sprawl. Many major cities—like New York, Washington, or Miami—could soon find themselves under water. Olthuis does, however, caution against a Waterworld-like future.He doesn’t believe in cities existing solely on water due to high costs of maintenance and constant energy consumption. He thinks the future lies in already existing cities that use naturally existing water to expand and improve. His hope is that, one day, 10 percent of the Netherlands could become a blue city. But it doesn’t have to stop there. “It’s not only about architecture, it’s not just about having fun in IJburg. It’s about rethinking how we, as communities, want to live in cities.”The city may not be fully built yet, but, given its multi-faceted approach to sustainable urban design, IJburg could be seen as a first step in that direction. At the very least, it is an already existing example for how to successfully integrate water into our cities.

This story originally appeared as “Are the Floating Houses of the Netherlands A Solution Against the Rising Seas” on Pacific Standard, an editorial partner site. Subscribe to the magazine in print and follow Pacific Standard on Twitter to support journalism in the public interest.

Click here to view the article in pdf

Click here to view the article at the source website

Parthenon, The Floating Sea Wall

Inhabitat, Tafline Laylin, December 2015

Certain world leaders might be dragging their feet on addressing climate change, but in the meantime, Koen Olthuis and the rest of the Waterstudio crew are working on solutions that we can use today. The Blue energy floating sea wall is a floating breakwater that doubles as an energy generator. Called The Parthenon, the floating breakwater not only stems the crash of water pushing into a harbor, but harvests the tremendous energy a wall of water like that can generate.

Waterstudio used the Hudson River to illustrate their new design’s function. “In a harbour on the Hudson river in New York the wave conditions are so strong that a sea wall must protect its boats. The strong current in the river is constantly attacking it and water is pushing itself against and through the fixed wall, which results in more corrosion of the sea wall every year.”

The floating sea wall acts as a permeable breakwater that converts the wave power into electrical energy while reducing the waves’ impact on the harbor at the same time. “The floating breakwater lives with the force of the river instead of fighting it,” they told Inhabitat in an email.

Related: Aquatect Koen Olthuis tells Inhabitat how to embrace rising sea levels

The columns of the sea wall are comprised of 3-foot cylinders that rotate – both clockwise and counter clockwise – at low speed. The energy created by this rotation is then captured in a concrete box inside the floating platform. The cylinders are filled with water to give the structure flexibility without affecting in any way the efficacy of the wall in reducing the wave’s impact on the harbor. The whole thing is then anchored to the riverbed, and the top can double as an urban green space or boulevard.

“The Parthenon blue energy sea wall resembles the column structure of the famous ancient temple in Greece,” according to Waterstudio, “but divers see it as a part of the sunken city of Atlantis.”

Click here for the full article

Click here for the website

Sea Tree at Cover

By Centre for the future of museums
Cover Trendwatch 2017
Photo Credits: Waterstudio

Click here for the full article

Floating villas Waterrocks Zeewolde on sale

Floating Villas Waterrocks are on sale. These 9 villas located in Zeewolde all have an unique waterview. For more information:

Click here for the website

Project Waterrocks Zeewolde

Balance d’eau ontwikkelt 9 luxe, door Waterstudio.NL onder architectuur ontworpen, drijvende woningen in de Blauwe Diamant, Zeewolde.

U heeft rondom waterbeleving met vrij uitzicht over het water en weilanden.
De woning heeft een eigen ligplaats met verbinding naar diverse recreatie vaarroutes.
De ruime tuin met berging biedt tevens ruimte voor parkeren op eigen terrein.
Een unieke locatie voor drijvend wonen centraal gelegen in Nederland!
U wordt eigenaar van het perceel en de drijvende woning naar uw keuze.

In principe is dit min of meer hetzelfde als een landkavel, alleen de woning drijft en is afgemeerd aan meerpalen.
De woningen voor het project, Waterrocks de blauwe diamant, zijn ontworpen door Waterstudio.NL uit Rijswijk.
Het bureau, geleidt door Koen Olthuis, is al sinds 2002 gespecialiseerd in architectuur en stedenbouw op en aan het water. In 2007 Olthuis stond op nr 122 van de Time Magazine lijst met meest invloedrijke mensen in de wereld, door de wereldwijde interesse in zijn waterontwikkeling. Het Franse magazine Terra Eco koos hem als een van de 100 “groene” personen die de wereld gaan verbeteren in 2011. In 2015 hij is geselecteerd bij een internationale jury als een van de vijftig jonge vernieuwers van de 21ste eeuw in het boek “50Under50”. Bouwen op water is Olthuis levenswerk en hij is internationaal ook wel bekend als de “Floating Dutchman”.

U heeft nu de kans om in een echte Waterstudio woning te wonen!

Koen Olthuis: “De waterwoningen in de Blauwe Diamant hebben zijn voor ons heel bijzonder, wij zien de drijvende woning als een “normale” woning op een drijvende fundering. In dit project komt dit goed naar voren, een stevige ruime woning, een grote tuin en de sfeer van het leven op het water. Solid as a Waterrock!”

U heeft al een kavel met hierop een complete waterwoning type Waterrocks 1 voor € 399.500,- VON inclusief BTW.

Het Balance d’eau bouwconcept
De basis bestaat uit een robuuste drijvende betonnen kelderbak welke prefab wordt geproduceerd. De constructie van de opbouw is licht van gewicht, hoog geïsoleerd, stijf en sterk.

Kwaliteit

Een nieuwe woning is één van de belangrijkste beslissingen van uw leven. U moet kunnen vertrouwen op de kwaliteit. Dit is bij een drijvende woning niet anders dan bij een landwoning.
Mede omdat de Balance d’eau woningen uit prefab elementen op locatie worden geassembleerd is de bouwkwaliteit, het afwerkingsniveau en het wooncomfort van hoog niveau.

Genieten

Wonen op het water geeft een gevoel van vrijheid en natuurbelevening. Met het vrije uitzicht over het water en de mogelijkheid om vanuit uw eigen ligplaats met een bootje weg te kunnen varen ervaart u dit in project Waterrocks in de overtreffende trap. Elke dag voelt als een vakantiedag!
Optimaal wooncomfort
Met een speciaal ontwikkeld computerreken- en simulatiemodel wordt het ontwerp uitgebalanceerd en ligt het zwaartepunt zo laag dat de woning stabiel in het water ligt en ook bij harde wind nauwelijks beweegt. Zodoende kan het wooncomfort wedijveren met luxe landwoningen.
Duurzaam
Het bouwsysteem heeft een hoge isolatiewaarde. Hierdoor is het energieverbruik laag en voldoet het systeem aan de laatste EPC normen van het bouwbesluit.
Optioneel is zelfs een innovatieve warmtewisselaar mogelijk die de energie opgeslagen in het oppervlaktewater gebruikt om de woning te verwarmen, een innovatie op energiebesparing!

Interesse?

Neem bij interesse contact op met ZO makelaars – ZO.nl
Ook kunt u op afspraak de voorbeeldwoning te Delft bezoeken om de bouwkwaliteit, het wooncomfort, maar bovenal de meerwaarde van het vrije wonen op water te ervaren.

Omgeving

Zeewolde, Natuurlijk centraal in Nederland

Zeewolde ligt centraal in Nederland. Het centrum van Amsterdam of Utrecht ligt op nog geen 50 km afstand.
Zeewolde is een watersport paradijs met heerlijk zwemwater, idyllische vaarten en tochten om per boot of kano te verkennen. Vandaar dat de waterwoningen ruimte bieden voor een eigen ligplaats!
Aan de langgerekte Veluwerandmeren vind je een eindeloos lange kustlijn, Zeewolde heeft het grootste zoetwater ‘binnenstrand’ van Nederland! Nieuw is het eiland in de vorm van een tulp.

Omgeving

In het centrum van Zeewolde kunt u heerlijk winkelen en even genieten op een gezellig terras waar je vele restaurants, cafés, terrassen, winkels en boetiekjes vindt. Overzichtelijk en modern ingericht en alles op loopafstand.
Zeewolde biedt vele kilometers gemarkeerde en ongemarkeerde wandelroutes, langs het water of door de bossen en uitgestrekte ruige natuurgebieden zoals De Stille Kern.
Het Horsterwold en Hulkesteinse Bos vormen een van de grootste aaneengesloten loofbossen van West-Europa, waar vele bijzondere dieren en planten voorkomen zoals bevers, zeearenden en wilde Konikpaarden.

Planning

Projectfase: bouw gestart
Start verkoop: december 2016
Start bouw: juni 2017
Verwachte oplevering: december 2017

Woningtypen

Van de 9 huizen in dit project zijn er nog 25 beschikbaar

Waterrocks 1

Vrijstaande woning€ 399.500 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers4 kamers
8 huizen beschikbaar

Waterrocks 2

Vrijstaande woning€ 406.400 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers4 kamers
8 huizen beschikbaar

Waterrocks 3

Vrijstaande woning€ 408.000 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers1 kamer
8 huizen beschikbaar

Waterrocks 5

Vrijstaande woning€ 449.500 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers1 kamer

Eerste waterwoning Stadswerven volgende maand bewoond

By Albert Sok
AD
April.11.2017
Photo Credit: Victor van Breukelen

Eerste waterwoning Stadswerven volgende maand bewoond
Dordtenaren Paul en Alice Rijfkogel moeten nog vier weken geduld hebben, maar dan kunnen ze eindelijk hun drijvende droomhuis in het water van de Wantij betrekken.

Sinds maandagavond ligt de eerste van vijf drijvende woningen te pronken in de rivier. Het afgelopen jaar werd de blikvanger gebouwd in Heerenveen, waarvandaan die zaterdag vertrok richting de Stadswerven. Woensdag en donderdag wordt de loopbrug vastgemaakt aan de waterwoning, waarna binnen de laatste puntjes op de i gezet kunnen worden. ,,We moeten alleen nog behangen en de vloer leggen’’, popelt Rijfkogel, nu nog woonachtig in Dubbeldam. De komende weken volgen nummer twee tot en met vier. Volgend jaar zomer meert ook de laatste van de vijf aan.

Click here for the full article