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.

Assesment based on process, analysis, documentation, (re)presentation of and reflection on the end result. Presentation will be oral and is guided by a variety of physical models, drawings, photographs and text, produced during the course. The products should give a clear insight in spatial logics, structure, experience and the relation and meaning of the design towards its environment. The design is assessed on its coherency, relevance, precision, elegance and elaboration. Its relevance and coherence are determined by its' explicit position and relation to the dynamic Delta environment, the program and the embodied experience of the place.

The design project is awarded a grade that is a whole or half number between 1.0 and 10.0. Students pass the course with a 6.0 or higher. With a grade below 6.0: students who presented assessable work during the course are allowed to do a repair to change the grade into a ‘pass’. The repair is unsupervised and needs to be completed within 2 weeks after the end of the course. When the repair is unsuccessful, the student needs to follow the entire course again.