west 8 Hoek van Holland

Check out West 8s Hoek van Holland project (see above), at the mouth of the River Maas in Netherlands, just down the river from Rotterdam, on their website (links on the right), as well as loads of other amazing projects.

Adrian Geuze International dialogues: Architecture and Climate Change

I went to the RIBA to see Adrian Geuze, head of West 8 the pioneering Dutch Landscape Practice. I think we can learn a lot from what he described as the Dutch approach to climatic challenges. Geuze described how our heritage has always beent threatened by environmental forces and the Dutch seem to understand this better than anyone. They however, have it in their mindset to not be overcome by these challenges and instead fight back. He described how for centuries the Dutch have 'punished the sea' reclaiming it for their own, only stopping now and again to do some painting.

Storm off the dutch Coast
Ludolf Backhoysen 1682,
Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam

For Geuze, the built environment is key to the planet's well being and instead a coexistence that manipulates nature for our own benefit is the way forward, combining natural environment, ecology, culture and architecture. He drew interesting conclusions about threat and perception of threat, a refreshing opinion in today's international bombardment of apocolyptic feeling, nature should not be feared but understood and adapted to. He showed a painting of fisherman on stormy seas at the foot of Mount Fiji by Hiroshi (when i find a picture i will post it) Depending on the way you look at it the stormy seas could be perceived as the threat, so too could the dormant volcano of Mount Fuji but all that is important to the fishermen is facing these every day to earn their living, adapting their lives to coexistence. Similarly he showed how in Scandinavian and and Northern Ciountries such as Russia, their depiction of springtime is very different to our gentle perception of bulbs blossoming lambs jumping etc. For them it is about the violence of nature, ice melting, rivers flowing again with dangerous currents and if you listen to Rachmaninov's Springtime you can hear the tempestuous nature of the season being evoked.

Geuze went on to talk about his visions for the Netherlands in the future. Continuing from the Deltaworks of the past the future should be continiuing to link large scale ecosystems with urban plans. Turning west Netherlands into a type of L.A. and using land fill technology to make a sea-borne city. Almera, a new town is already being developed, the size of the Hague, but 5m below sea-level and even more extraordinary creating a landfill project site the size of Manhattan 30ft below sea level out of sand dunes, stabilized with vegetation. A goal to be a pioneer of the natural environment using the latest of ecological engineering eventually even changing the North sea levels as a whole by creating a series of sea based cities made by creating canyons in the sea bed and using the earth from them to build them. This is the jist of it, pretty inspirational stuff really.

west 8 toronto waterside

A great competition project that not only looked at the linear aspect of the waterfront, but intergrated the design right into the city a few blocks back, really rejuvenating the city as a whole. It is currently being constructed.

MACRO LANDSCAPES

This was the theme for our studio brief for the end of the first term. We had to choose two parks larger than 2000 arces, one abroad and one in London to study and map overlays for, focusing on our personal responses and the elements we find really interesting, in order to design a new circulation system for the park. I chose to look at Richmond park, as my Londodn park and my idea developed into creating a new system that captures each of the 3 unique views that one can experience in the park, with the approaches to each view concealing them, adding an element of surprise to your experience.

Here's a very conceptual diagram of the park and proposed route incorporating the the 3 views: