INTERVIEW: Koen Olthius of WaterStudio.nl at Inhabitat

An interview by Jill at Inhabitat-"To wrap up our disaster-resistant design theme this week, we would like to conclude with an interview of an exceptional architect who is paving the way in designing for a future water world. Koen Olthius of Waterstudio.nl says that despite our civilization’s history of trying to drain and fight against wet landscapes for the past thousand years, our best move for the future would be to “let water in and even make friends with the water”.

You have to trust an architect who has grown up in a landscape completely engineered for water. Roughly a third of the Netherlands lies below sea level, and is home to over sixty percent of the country’s population of 15.8 million people. The Dutch have spent the last few thousand years constructing dikes, pumps, and drainage systems in a constant battle to keep the encroaching North Sea at bay. On my recent trip to the Netherlands, I was fortunate to get the chance to sit down with architect, to discuss amphibious dwellings, floating foundations, and his experiences designing for water landscapes worldwide."
Read more at Inhabitat