Amphibious Living set out to explore flexible housing typologies and to stimulate new ways of thinking about living in extremely marshy or flood-land areas. In 2000, a design competition, a series of workshops, an exhibition and publication provided a comprehensive programme for staging this debate.

A large part of Holland’s landscape continues to reflect the centuries-long struggle to reclaim drained land from water. This legacy has engendered a somewhat defensive attitude to water. In the past, engineering technologies were deployed predominantly in reversing and controlling water, with the aim of maintaining a distinct boundary between land and sea. However, new technological developments have begun to change these ways of working and thinking, and there is now a growing realisation that marshiness and the potential for flooding should be considered important features of the Dutch landscape.

Conceptual background
Devised by Rotterdam-based Hans Venhuizen, a visual artist with a background in planning, Amphibious Living is an appeal for the abandonment of the compulsive control of water and for the acceptance of climactic influences, tides and seasons in the living environment.

The concept is based on the premise that controlling natural conditions should not begin with attempts to ‘tame’ the landscape according to pre-conceived models, but by taking full advantage of the qualities of the dynamic relationship between land and water. Equally, this means that living conditions cannot be predicted. Therefore the Amphibious Living concept also demands a more adventurous and self-sufficient approach.

Local natural features offer the starting point for the amphibious housing form. Living in very marshy or floodland areas should not be considered problematic by default. Rather, such terrain could offer the perfect conditions to support the development of, for example, floating houses or housing in featherweight constructions.

Until recently it has been common construction practice to lay a thick layer of sand several years before building commences, allowing the ground to settle down properly. Houses and other buildings are then built on concrete piles driven through to this firm layer of sand. The Amphibious Living concept stresses that this approach negates any trace of the original landscape. Amphibious forms of living can make such operations unnecessary, providing the prospect of desirable integration of new buildings within the countryside and landscape of their environment.

Design Competition
Kunstgebouw, a foundation for the encouragement of art and culture in the province of South Holland, held a design competition in 2000 to obtain innovative and stimulating proposals for 'amphibious building'.

Competition entries were invited in three categories. In the first, 'landscape and urban design', entries were required to concentrate on adjustments to the landscape and the town planning structures involved in amphibious forms of living. In the second, 'town planning and architecture', the brief was to design an amphibious residential area, to include a floating house which could also stand on dry land, or a land-based house also capable of floating. The theme of the third category was ‘living and working with water’. Participation in the first two categories was limited to professionals, but the third was open to anyone.

The resulting concrete and highly realistic solutions were tailored to the polders of Gouda, Barendrecht and Rotterdam-Ijsselmonde. They were presented in the autumn of 2000 at an exhibition in the Wisboomgemaal, Kinderdijk and in an accompanying illustrated publication.

Following this public presentation, three expert teams elaborated a number of the ideas submitted to formally consider their feasibility. Each team consisted of an implementation manager (an urban development expert) and a concept manager (someone who was able to preserve the qualities of the original proposal during the process of converting the idea into a plan). In every local authority, the plan proposals were put to a forum of residents, urban planners, administrators, water specialists and project developers. One project will be fully realised and is currently in planning.

By attempting to implement three actual plans in various locations across the province of South Holland, Amphibious Living became a substantive plea for an identity-generating connection with the true qualities of the environment.

www.amfibischwonen.nl