| Sumario: | For centuries, Dutch people have shown great ingenuity in keeping the water that surrounds their low-lying country at bay. That's allowed them to preserve land on which to build housing for the dense population of the Randstad, the crescent that runs from Amsterdam to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger has turned the idea on its head by putting houses in the water. Hertzberger's Amsterdam-based architecture studio designed its first "watervilla" back in 1986. Most important, the firm was able to build a prototype of the revised house in De Veersche Poort, located in Middelburg in southwestern Holland, which will eventually be home to six watervillas. Architect Patrick Franzen says the studio can't calculate the exact building cost, given the high engineering expense involved in getting a prototype off the ground or into the water, but he anticipates that the flotation system will be costly than earthbound foundations.
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