Presentation: Design study ‘Redesigning Deltas’

Redesigning Deltas strives for resilient and sustainable deltas in which social-economic prosperity is brought in balance with the vulnerable and dynamic relation between land and water. This ambition is about doing it differently, provoking a state of mind in which we will be able to use design as mean to innovate and create a new coherence in how we live with the delta. The ambition is to mobilize research and practice to develop the means to design and provide evidence in creating a new shared perspective on how to act.

Important prelude is the Design study in which new approaches are discovered and investigated through design of the dot on the horizon by multidisciplinary teams of urbanists, landscape architects and engineers to tests and profile the deign mechanism for the crucial aspects of the Dutch delta system. The interdisciplinary results are produced through the collaboration between Spatial Design (problem seeking, envisioning different best solutions (transformative change) for a complex & wicked challenge) and Design in Engineering (problem solving, finding the best solution for a clear and tame problem). Together this results in innovation and reveals the need for new knowledge.

The teams that are working on five challenges, moments in the Dutch Delta that will provide basis for an overall manifesto are: Defacto, Vista and Arcadis (Limburg) Fabrications, Bosch Slabbers and Tauw (River Corrdor, Waal) Urbanisten , Lola and Royal Haskoning DHV (RTM Port) Zus, Flux and Sweco (RTM Polder) and Studio Hartzema, Fedded-Olthof and Witteveen & Bos (Zeeland).

Redesiging Deltas is a cooperation between TU Delft, research group Delta Urbanism, Deltares, Resilient Delta, Erasmus University, Delta Program, PBL and Wageningen University and practice partners.