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The water tower in Nieuw Lekkerland is built in 1915. The tower has a hexagonal form and is made out of a concrete skeleton filled up with masonry. The tower is situated on a dike just outside the village Nieuw Lekkerland. The view from the tower is breath taking. On one side of the tower one looks out on the river De Lek, on the other side one has a view on the typical Dutch polder landscape with its many windmills. The water tower is bought by two local citizens of Nieuw Lekkerland. They asked Ruud Visser Architects to make a design for the conversion of the water tower into two appartments.

 

'Do not change a water tower into a house, yet live in a water tower'

The water tower in Nieuw Lekkerland is built in 1915. The tower has a hexagonal form and is made out of a concrete skeleton filled up with masonry. Originally the masonry-fillings were plastered in a sandstone color, accentuating the concrete skeleton. However nothing of this is visible anymore. In recent years the tower has been painted over in an all white covering.

The tower is situated on a dike just outside the village Nieuw Lekkerland. The view from the tower is breath taking. On one side of the tower one looks out on the river De Lek, on the other side one has a view on the typical Dutch polder landscape with its many windmills. When looking a little further, you can see the windmills of Kinderdijk as well.

The water tower is bought by two local citizens of Nieuw Lekkerland. The two young men are born and raised next to the water tower and now they want to live inside it. They asked Ruud Visser Architects to make a design for the conversion of the water tower.

Our design-study started from two different directions:

1. How can we make openings in the facade for daylight, without losing the character of the water tower?

2. How can we make a housing-plan that celebrates living inside a water tower, instead of turning the water tower into a residential building?

After a thorough study we concluded that the diamond-formed windows in the facade are essential for the character of the water tower. These diamond-formed windows must be kept. However the new planned openings must not follow the zigzag patron of the diamond-formed windows. Instead the new openings have to 'dance around' it (by way of speaking). The position of the new openings will be defined by the housing-plans.

The housing-plan in this hexagonal tower with a diameter of 9 meters must not only meet all the housing and building regulations, but it also has to celebrate 'living inside this water tower'. The tower will ne divided into three sections: the garden-room of double height, and two dwellings of two floors on top of it. Every dwelling has two floors: a floor with living-areas and a floor with sleeping-areas. Each section has another view of the landscape. So one dwelling is looking over the river, the other over the polder, and the garden-room is fixed to the garden. Each dwelling has its unique floor plan. The construction in each dwelling follows the layout and turns around with the floor plan.

The openings in the facade will be screened on the outside of the sleeping areas with vertical wooden lattices. The wooden lattice screen will function as a curtain for the sleeping areas.