Europan 11 Competition Entry | Almere, Netherlands | 2011
Green Shelter
Designed by Auzie Triratnamurti with Joost van Dijk
The assignment is to design an unusual and unique building that can first serve as an eye catching information centre or cultural pavilion and can subsequently be “reused” as a detached house in the wood. This building should therefore be demountable. The study assignment is a landscape design for the already existing woods with extra focus on the new water system to be constructed and, in particular, the way in which the “woodlands” in this wood can be developed.
Our plan is to create a framework for the future planning that would become a ‘living in green’ pilot project of city of Almere. For this we are proposing a framework called the ‘Green Shelter’. Similar to what it means, Green Shelter acts under this framework: capturing water, natural noise buffer between the outside and the inside of the Green Shelter, a guideline of living quality, accessibility system in a form of pedestrian path network, creating a pavilion building which can be transformed for other uses.
The Green Shelter theme represents not only the framework of the woodlands, but it also stands for the pavilion / house as a small scale detailed part of the project. The shaping process of the building occurs in step-by-step basis that is required to create flexibility and sustainability in the building for other future function(s). Detachability as the most important aspect that determines a possibility of relocation is achieved by a detachable maple timber structure. The local forest supplies the maple wood. The complete timber structure of the building is being exposed to emphasize the detachability and the aesthetic. The building has a roof garden that captures rainwater, preserves heat inside the building in winter and adds a green environment to the surrounding. Several locations for the pavilion are thinkable in the urban area. It could be located on the boulevard platform, at the beach close to the marina, at the beach right in front of the woodlands, or at the beach between the boulevard and the woodlands. The last location is the most optimum, because it is accessible from and integrated to all the different areas of the Almere Dune masterplan. The location for the house is inside the woodlands, as a part of the open space housing community, or as a freestanding forest house.
The Green Shelter offers the future house owners freedom to envision their own houses within some guidelines to preserve a natural environment. These guidelines determine the density of the plots. Private parking for forest housing is located within the plot. Since in the open space there is more parking needed, it is grouped and concealed in an artificial hill at the entrance of each community. This hill serves also as a view buffer between the community and public roads. The top of the hill is used as filter ponds for the grey water treatment.