Leeuwarden, Netherlands

Europan 11 | Leeuwarden

Flood House

The set up of the project is characterized by a continue residential aggregation closed to the Van Harinxmakanaal settle down along the coasts of the new water basins created in all the area. Besides emphasising the relationship between Van Harinxmakanaal and the project area, this project component is a new aggregationing block for the whole Kanaalzone settlement and draws a border between two brand new different public areas, the green public area and the water public one. As far as the private housing is concerned, all the competition rules have been observed in terms of flats and blocks functionality, safety, pleasantness of the overall housing solution, comfort, energy-saving, choice of the building material and last but not least the formal quality of the project. The residential building is placed along the new coast. This position allows the houses to enjoy the view over the surrounding forest and facing in general the natural scenery. It is made up of duplex with windows on both sides. 80, 95 and 120 square-meter flats are available and cater for the needs of the different resident groups. More specifically, the smallest flats conform to couples with or without a single child and the largest ones are an excellent accommodation for either a whole family or three independent people (be they students or workers). A medium-size solution meets the needs of small families or couples seeking for extra room. All the houses have both a private parking at the entrance and a mooring place on the water which can harbour a small boat. Wooden façade houses are all equipped with a sauna and a garden.

The main issues addressed by the project are the following: • Creating a well-connected web-like settlement, where the Kanaalzone is well integrated with the surrounding settlements and gives birth to an aggregation pole where dwellers can meet and socialize • Conceiving a high-quality project on both urban and architectonical dimension • Creating a peculiar attractive pole which benefits from its facilities and gets extra value • Creating a “square on the water” and a special place in the form of the residential buildings, whose functions characterize this part of the settlement • Creating the new basin whose main function contributes to lay special emphasis on the connection between water and land and justifies the “flood house” label given to the project • Building new housing units capable of satisfying the needs of today’s life style and of employing technical tools that are in keeping with the surrounding environment • Exploring the current and controversial topic of the relationship between Environment and Building, especially in a place where nature is still “immaculate”

The ultimate aim of the project is that of being consistent and coherent with the actual social and economic context of the venue involved in the re-planning. In order to do so, re-thinking of the public space has been necessary as a means for promoting social interaction through the intelligent exploitation of common spaces and the consequent mixing of people belonging to different social classes and coming from different places. In fact socialization is the dominant underlying theme of the project. It has been explored in detail, especially in relation to another basic subject, i.e., residential space. Socialization is pursued through the creation of different public spaces (green public space and water public space) but also by means of the variety of settling solutions that allows different types of family nuclei to interact with one another thus heading to human and material heterogeneity. A further objective of primary importance is that of blurring more and more the not any longer clear-cut distinction between the conditions of living together and living alone, which mirrors the prevailing trend of the European modern and possibly future lifestyle. Therefore, the project faces the controversial issue of urbanity as “urban quality” and sets out to mediate between the urban and the architectonical scale, thus establishing a relation between natural environment and human dwelling. The residential settlement turns out to be an attractive pole, also thanks to the presence of a well-structured public zone.

We created six modular independents typologies with a very simple volume drilled on opposite sides for natural lighting and ventilation. These types can be used like single house or compositions with two or three floor. The urban development concept wasn’t translated with townhouses. we created some houses aggregations with max two unit at the ground floor obtaining a system with more privacy and intimacy for each single house or aggregations. This configuration creates many benefits: - multiple access points between land and water - private green spaces separated - interesting view - all houses, blocks are independent

This configuration has also led to the definition of the concept for energy saving. The house uses natural ventilation in summer time by glazed façades on opposite sides and protection of trees between the blocks. In winter the sun can enter by windows while the remaining sides of the house are super insulated. At opaque sides (walls, ceilings and floors) are installed both radiant heating that cooling. The plants are fed by a geothermal heat pump that uses the excavations of the piles for fondations. The foundation piles must be very dense to maintain the necessary friction. For this reason it estimates a high amount for a depth of at least 5 ml.

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Europan 11 | Leeuwarden