The Beetle Line
The Beetle Line
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The Beetle Line is a 14-metre, pavilion designed to support the Green Tiger Beetle in the Loonse en Drunense Duinen. The project reframes architecture as a perceptual tool and ecological mediator, fostering empathy for non-human life and dialogue with the landscape.
The Beetle Line is a 14-metre, pavilion designed to support the Green Tiger Beetle in the Loonse en Drunense Duinen. The project reframes architecture as a perceptual tool and ecological mediator, fostering empathy for non-human life and dialogue with the landscape.
Beetles need loose, bare sand which is currently threatened by vegetation growth and rising nitrogen, so the pavilion, with slatted timber frames and waxed cotton fabric is pushed 2cm per day against prevailing wind like a sled, raking sand, breaking up overgrowth, and creating protected microhabitats.
Rainwater collected in an internal basin regulates movement, which keeps the pavilion still during sensitive nesting periods, while guests can release drops to moisten dry sand, guided by humidity sensors. Fully deconstructible and built from locally sourced, non-native oak, when the pavilion become obstructed it can be simply dismantled and reassembled elsewhere, leaving only faint traces, much like the beetles themselves.
Visitors learn from an exhibition inside about beetles and ecology of the dynamic landscape. After guests are guided to rest on curved benches at the rear. The structure takes inspiration from early planes, sails and helicopters.
This moving structure highlights fragile ecological processes, deepening awareness and responsibility for sustaining the fragile landscape
Title: The Beetle Line
Client: Fontys Academy
Year: 2025
Location: Loonse en Drunense Duinen
Assignment:Designing with empathy for non-human life while respecting the geomorphic dynamics of the Loonse en Drunense Duinen.
The beetle’s life cycle spans three years, most of it spent as larva hunting from its burrow in the sand or lying dormant in winter, any disturbance during these stages can cause burrow collapse or expose them to predators and drought. In response, the pavilion uses rainwater as a regulator: when movement is beneficial, the internal basin stays light, and when stillness is needed, the basin fills, increasing weight and slowing the structure. During the nesting periods, drying of the sand can become dangerous, so humidity sensors beneath the pavilion alert guests to open the basin’s drain, releasing small drops of water to gently moisten the substrate. In this way, visitors actively support the sensitive habitat conditions of the beetles while learning about ongoing conservation work by organisations such as Natuurmonumenten.
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