Apposition
Architecture beside uncertainty
D.E. van den Burg (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
R.S. Guis – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
O. Klijn – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
This graduation project investigates how architecture can function in a place where permanent construction is not self-evident. The starting point for this research lies in Midden-Delfland, where the transition between city and landscape is under pressure from housing demand, infrastructure, climate adaptation and changing patterns of land use. Within the larger urban development plan, Region 2, the Definitieve OpslagPlaats NoordOost-Abtspolder (DOP NOAB), forms a critical point of tension. The presence of contaminated ground, technical restrictions and a maintenance-dependent cover system make conventional forms of construction problematic.
The project, titled Apposition, starts from the question of how an adaptive architectural system can be designed for contaminated ground. Rather than hiding the uncertainty of the site or attempting to resolve it completely, this uncertainty is used as the starting point for the design. Apposition describes an architectural attitude in which different conditions are organised alongside one another: contaminated ground and dwelling, temporality and residential quality, individual homes and collective structures, landscape and building.
The design develops a modular and reversible housing system that can be placed, adapted, dismantled and reused. Compact dwellings are supported by collective spaces, shared outdoor areas and a landscape strategy that softens the hard transition between the city and Midden-Delfland. At the level of material and detail, the project investigates how demountable connections, biobased materials and reused components can contribute to an architecture that touches the ground lightly.
The project shows that contaminated ground does not only have to be understood as a limitation, but can also become the starting point for another form of architecture: adaptive, collective, reversible and conscious of time. In doing so, Apposition proposes a way of building that can become meaningful without being fully dependent on permanence.