The urbanisation of the Netherlands presents cities with a challenge: ever more hard surfacing, ever less room to capture rainwater. Floating construction offers municipalities an answer. Delft embraced this principle by creating a generous stretch of water, along which six floating homes now form a new shoreline.

The construction system for water dwellings offered unprecedented design freedom. In this house, that freedom has been used to the full: every horizontal and vertical metre has been employed to make the home as spacious and open as possible. The entrance stairway leads to a living room that opens towards all four points of the compass — a house without a back, where light and views flow in from every angle.

Water is not a backdrop here, but the very driver of the design. From both the living room and the kitchen, the eye glides effortlessly across the water, and the living spaces extend seamlessly into a series of floating terraces. The living room culminates in a cantilevered balcony that quite literally floats above the water — the boundary between inside and outside dissolves into a seamless transition.

The time of day, too, is woven into the design. The east-facing terrace catches the morning sun; the library on the west side catches it again as evening falls. In this way, the house turns with the sun throughout the day — and in increasingly warm summers, offers a cool, shaded retreat from the heat in equal measure. In the evening, the upper terrace becomes the stage for the setting sun: a daily spectacle, reserved exclusively for those who live in this house on the water.