Sustainable Selfsufficient Floating Home
Vincent van der Meulen
Team 4d, led by Vincent van der Meulen (28), wins the competition for a ‘Sustainable Selfsufficient Floating Home’.
This multidisplinairy team consists of Kraaijvanger•Urbis, Dura Vermeer, DGMR, Giesbers & Van Der Graaf b.v. and ITHO.
This competition is the perfect means to end the aura of dreaminess, of idealism and positivism surrounding cradle-to-cradle and sustainaiblity. Once and forall we lay waste the claims that sustainabilty and cradle-to-cradle could never lead to any concrete, precise or tangeble results.
The goal of this great team of architects, builders, constructional physici, installers and costexperts was to create a remarkable and feasable floating home. The result, a fantastic home that literally floats on the qualities of living on water. A house that does not polute it’s environment, instead cleans it and collects enough energy in the summer to power it through the winter. Moreover a house that’s open to new technological and environmental developments. No rosy assumptions but smart and integral designing.
Sustainability is mainly found in time and motion, the fourth dimension.
To make the most of this, the building is adaptive, flexible and intelligent. We float, we are 100% self-sufficient, no wires means freedom!
The house has two facades, a shell that protects against the sun and a glass house which opens up to the sun. This heat can be absorbed or kept out. A sunloving side and a sunshy side. By seasonally rotating the house we create a 40% reduction of the heat load and 90% reduction of the cooling load.
The activities that require warmth are placed upstairs and those that thrive in cooler temperatures, below. Thus utilising the naturally rising of warm air. The core of the house contains all the functional areas and all technology. The applied techniques are durable, no nonsense, self-evident, and communicate a sustainable lifestyle. In terms of material, 63% is C2C-certified and 28% is fully recyclable.
A fantastic floating home designed around a water experience. A house that cleans the environment with it’s (vertical) gardens. This home provides enough energy to daily charge an electric car. A house that can keep up with the developments over time and best of all, a great place to live!
year
2010
project team
Vincent van der Meulen, Hans Goverde, Anja Mueller, Roos Cornelissen, David Harris