water work station

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Design for a work station for aquatic humans

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In the Netherlands, we have a long tradition of battling against the water. Many typical Dutch landscapes owe their identity to this battle. In the forthcoming century, seawater will play a more important role than ever in the Netherlands. The re-wetting and salinization of the Dutch landscape is a new reality the Dutch will have to deal with. The natural reflex in this country is to adapt the landscape to man's needs. With water work station Lola, the Weedgrocers turns the perspective on this question with 180˚ and asks himself if the aquatic evolution of humankind wouldn't be a smarter coping strategy.

Part of the water work station - designed by Overtreders W - is material research carried out by De Onkruidenier (The Weedgrocer) and Overtreders W. Together they want to develop a building material made of resources that can be found or harvested in this future production landscape, such as oyster shells, cattail, and madder. The starting point of the research project is hempcrete: a building material made of hemp hurds and lime, that is used to make strong and insulating walls. Step by step, we develop hempcrete as a circular future-proof building material with new sustainable resources, different colours and different structures. The results of the weedcrete research will be applied within Re-Framing Architecture, a building system Overtreders W are developing.

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