The Delta Shelter

The design studio Delta Shelter is a combined studio, offered by the Architecture group Form Studies and the Section of Landscape Architecture. Starting from a shared interest in the impact of human made interventions in their natural environments, the assignment is located in a Dutch Delta landscape. This specific condition, characterized by the dynamic environment on the border of water and land and the ongoing negotiation between human presence and natural forces, is leading for this elective project.

The poetic qualities and natural forces of the Delta environment will be the starting point of this course; the relation between the human scale and the unrestricted landscape, the influence of wind and tide, the flora and fauna and the position of the human in this vulnerable yet strong environment is to be understood through artistic documentation and physical acts of making, sensing and experimentation. The vastness of the location and the constantly changing conditions require students to research the meaning of boundaries, movement and time.

In the design assignment students study how inherently static architectural forms are temporal and affective experiences, part of natural rhythms and therewith objects to consider over time. What it means to feel sheltered in these particular conditions, is studied through the lived experience and physical structure depicted in physical models.

On a reflective level, the studio deals with the role, impact and contribution of architecture and landscape architecture in such places. What are the necessary conditions to give a valuable contribution to this environment? Is it inevitable that an intervention is a disturbing factor, can it only be of temporary presence, or can human interventions contribute to the regeneration of these kinds of environments? Ecological, ethical and aesthetic questions are brought together in the consideration and initiation of built intervention in the Delta environment.