Neil Moncrieff
Urbanism
A non-straightforward archipelago
This project tests the potential for new infrastructural and spatial typologies of augmented (designed) ecologies – namely, seaweed plantations, mussel pole fields, oyster reefs and salt marsh meadows - to alter the performative, cultural and economic landscapes of the Dutch Southwest Delta.
A re-evaluation of flood management strategies and a return to estuarine conditions, might see a combined productive / protective infrastructural approach that could re-animate natural systems and habitats as well as bolster cultural connections to the landscape, by identifying and promoting systems synergies between natural and productive, processes and landuses, for mutual environmental and socio-economic benefit.
A new set of economies, cultural connections and visual landscapes via these spatial infrastructures that are essentially maintained to provide protection against flood and rising sea levels, could enshrine ecosystem health as a fundamental requirement for the maintenance of the urban, social and economic communities within a more complicated, interconnected and multi-functional delta.