Architecture students from Manchester and Delft met last week to create sustainable designs for dwellings for a season, decennia, or for five hundred years from now.
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Ecological city
The barbecue man comes every summer to a different residential area and builds his barbecue house on a bridge, the barbecue bridge. People eat and drink in his house, and finally meet their neighbours. When the summer is over, the cows have all been eaten and the barbeque house is burnt down, only the recollection remains when the people walk across the former barbeque bridge.
This is one of the seasonal designs of ‘Destiny Unknown’, a workshop organised by the Architecture Faculty’s atelier environMENTAL design, in co-operation with the Manchester School of Architecture and the DIOC-dgo design Atelier, ‘The Ecological City’. For one week, 20 Manchester and 22 Delft students worked on environmental designs.
“Environmental design aims to actively enhance the quality of the human, animal and plant environment,” says Mariette Overschie, of Urban Design and the Environment. “Because both universities follow the same strategy, which isn’t used in the rest of Holland, we thought an exchange would be instructive and interesting.”
Students had to design sustainable dwellings for one season, a life-time or eternity, each with different requirements.
Laura Hulsman and Jorrit ten Berg have design ideas for the next twenty years at Delft’s Voorhof area. “High-rise block buildings in that area are seventeen floors high, with twelve apartments in a row. We don’ know how things will be in the world within twenty years. But we do know that building will still stand. We thought people would like more space for living,” Laura explains.
“The idea is to sacrifice one house on every floor as a common area, where you can meet your neighbours. Furthermore we designed more elevators for better movement and the building gets an extra gallery which people can use for living or as a backyard,” Jorrit adds.
Additionally, these students designed solutions for ecological bottlenecks: “Solar panels can be used as sunshades. In the back, there’s space to dry your laundry that doesn’t block the solar panels. Another bio-climate facility is a water-win-back system, whereby recycled water is used for the toilet and washing machines,” Laura says. “And we also designed an underground parking garage.”
Beer
Another group, designing a model for the year 2500, was having a hard time. Edwin Strik, a Delft student explains: “The first two days, brainstorming was all we did. Who knows what the world will look like in five hundred years. Things we now take for granted, won’t be here anymore. We don’t have a frame of reference. Besides, you can only discuss how the world will look like in five hundred years with a beer in your hand.” His futuristic scale model is built on pillars. “Our climate will change in five hundred years. Carbon dioxide levels will rise, and temperatures too. Our building therefore has climate control, natural energy sources, and isorientated to the sun, which hopefully won’t be different by then. The roof can easily be opened for ventilation. We expect sea levels to rise, dikes to break. Holland will be completely flooded, so we developed houses and residential areas on piles. Our goal was to design buildings which resist these changes and we therefore needed flexible and adaptable buildings.”
Most students thought it an instructive week, but simply too much. Lectures every morning, followed by design studios the rest of the day. “In England, we’d have been more relaxed about a week like this. We’ll get instructions on Monday and come back on Friday, instead of having the whole week planned,” says Leo Harris, a Manchester student. “It would’ve been nice if we’d seen some buildings in Holland, or at least in Delft. We haven’t seen it by daylight.”
Architecture students from Manchester and Delft met last week to create sustainable designs for dwellings for a season, decennia, or for five hundred years from now.
Ecological city
The barbecue man comes every summer to a different residential area and builds his barbecue house on a bridge, the barbecue bridge. People eat and drink in his house, and finally meet their neighbours. When the summer is over, the cows have all been eaten and the barbeque house is burnt down, only the recollection remains when the people walk across the former barbeque bridge.
This is one of the seasonal designs of ‘Destiny Unknown’, a workshop organised by the Architecture Faculty’s atelier environMENTAL design, in co-operation with the Manchester School of Architecture and the DIOC-dgo design Atelier, ‘The Ecological City’. For one week, 20 Manchester and 22 Delft students worked on environmental designs.
“Environmental design aims to actively enhance the quality of the human, animal and plant environment,” says Mariette Overschie, of Urban Design and the Environment. “Because both universities follow the same strategy, which isn’t used in the rest of Holland, we thought an exchange would be instructive and interesting.”
Students had to design sustainable dwellings for one season, a life-time or eternity, each with different requirements.
Laura Hulsman and Jorrit ten Berg have design ideas for the next twenty years at Delft’s Voorhof area. “High-rise block buildings in that area are seventeen floors high, with twelve apartments in a row. We don’ know how things will be in the world within twenty years. But we do know that building will still stand. We thought people would like more space for living,” Laura explains.
“The idea is to sacrifice one house on every floor as a common area, where you can meet your neighbours. Furthermore we designed more elevators for better movement and the building gets an extra gallery which people can use for living or as a backyard,” Jorrit adds.
Additionally, these students designed solutions for ecological bottlenecks: “Solar panels can be used as sunshades. In the back, there’s space to dry your laundry that doesn’t block the solar panels. Another bio-climate facility is a water-win-back system, whereby recycled water is used for the toilet and washing machines,” Laura says. “And we also designed an underground parking garage.”
Beer
Another group, designing a model for the year 2500, was having a hard time. Edwin Strik, a Delft student explains: “The first two days, brainstorming was all we did. Who knows what the world will look like in five hundred years. Things we now take for granted, won’t be here anymore. We don’t have a frame of reference. Besides, you can only discuss how the world will look like in five hundred years with a beer in your hand.” His futuristic scale model is built on pillars. “Our climate will change in five hundred years. Carbon dioxide levels will rise, and temperatures too. Our building therefore has climate control, natural energy sources, and isorientated to the sun, which hopefully won’t be different by then. The roof can easily be opened for ventilation. We expect sea levels to rise, dikes to break. Holland will be completely flooded, so we developed houses and residential areas on piles. Our goal was to design buildings which resist these changes and we therefore needed flexible and adaptable buildings.”
Most students thought it an instructive week, but simply too much. Lectures every morning, followed by design studios the rest of the day. “In England, we’d have been more relaxed about a week like this. We’ll get instructions on Monday and come back on Friday, instead of having the whole week planned,” says Leo Harris, a Manchester student. “It would’ve been nice if we’d seen some buildings in Holland, or at least in Delft. We haven’t seen it by daylight.”
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