An entry by a team consisting of Professor Elizabeth English and students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels has recently been selected as a Finalist for the Architizer A+ Awards for the Plus Categories | Architecture +Self-Initiated Projects: category. ‘PHIBIOUS FARNSWORTH brings Professor English’s floodwater damage mitigation strategies to the Farnsworth House, the famous work by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Mies van der Rohe’s 1951 Farnsworth House, one of the better-known examples of modern domestic architecture, is an aesthetic culmination of simplicity, transparency, and integration with its unique landscape. Despite its original design in compliance with projected 100-year floods, the Farnsworth House has in recent years become increasingly vulnerable to floodwater damage from the adjacent Fox River. To accommodate and work in synchrony with this new environmental norm, ‘PHIBIOUS FARNSWORTH introduces an amphibious foundation system to raise and float the edifice in extreme flooding scenarios, and then lower it to its initial elevation as water recedes. This passive strategy combines appropriate, resilient technologies with a sensitivity to preserving this valuable cultural asset and its original aesthetic.
Our strategy replaces the house’s conventional static concrete pylons with sleeves that accommodate sliding vertical guidance posts. These posts, which allow the house to rise and fall while restricting its lateral movement, are extensions of the house’s existing wide-flange columns, reaching fifteen feet below the ground surface. A steel sub-frame installed just below surface-level supports a matrix of “buoyancy blocks” (similar to dock floats). When flooding occurs, the buoyancy blocks lift the house, with the sub-frame and columns transferring the forces. Using existing self-sealing breakaway technology, sewage and wastewater lines detach from the ascending structure; water and electrical supplies utilize long, coiled ‘umbilical’ lines.
“Floating slabs” are indeed already part of the Farnsworth House’s tectonic vocabulary, and the fully below-grade retrofit ensures that its appearance remains unaltered. ‘PHIBIOUS FARNSWORTH retains all of the house’s essential characteristics, and remains largely invisible and latent until activated by the presence of floodwater. Recognizing the urgent need for flood mitigation intervention, the project offers an innovative, unobtrusive update consistent with the house’s minimal aesthetic, and an effective alternative to the costly and time-consuming restorations consequent to each severe flood.
Whereas the Architizer A+ Jury Award is selected by the Architizer illustrious jury, it is the online public that chooses the Architizer A+ Popular Choice Award. A+ Public Voting started on March 4th and it will end on March 21st. This is a great opportunity to bring more recognition to the research and works of Waterloo Architecture.
Please visit the following link and vote for the ‘PHIBIOUS FARNSWORTH Buoyant Foundation Project submission!
https://awards.architizer.com/public/voting/?cid=39
