POMPEJUS TOWER, HALSTEREN, THE NETHERLANDS
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to achieve sufficient structural integrity, a massive quantity of wood would have been required, adding to existing budgetary concerns, so RO&AD resorted to a triangular steel framework – regulating costs and pleasing the structural engineers, who supported the leaning structure with piles driving deep into the banks’ soil.
Sourcing stakeholders
Initial designs conceived a tower 21 metres high. However, after surveying the site using drones, the architects realised that the tower’s scale had to be increased to better see over trees blocking views of the waterline from ground level. With the extra functions designed-in, and the height requirement increased, the initial budget of €600,000 was no longer enough to finance the project. “We needed to get people more connected to the tower. And we did that by crowd- funding and building the tower with local volunteers both companies and individuals,” says Kil.
Using crowdsourcing, the project team ADF AUGUST 2018
was able to raise an additional €70,000 in cash for the scheme, as well as more than €300,000 in kind – in the form of expertise from local construction companies, labour, and building materials. To foster closer ties with the landscape and its history, the architects also wanted to get the local community involved in the construction process itself, however the tower’s complexity meant this was an even greater challenge, as Kil explains: “The design was really, really complicated, but we wanted to make it possible for volunteers to screw the tower together. So first, we went to a local school to get them put together a miniature model of the tower that we had designed – and they weren’t able to. How could we expect them to assemble the real building?” The fix came to RO&AD almost by
chance. Kil recounts the story of a trip he and his fellow design partner, Ro Koster, took to a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia to present on various past projects. Also presenting was Toni Österlund from
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