RECHARGING FLANDERS’ WATERBATTERY

This project combines a landscape and architectural design to gradually transform ‘De Wijers’, a seepage area, into a water-buffering landscape. The design research shows the possibilities for a new sustainable landscape strategy with the aim of awakening citizens and local authorities to the potential of their region.

The effects of climate warming are increasingly visible in the Flemish landscape. Despite an increase in the annual average precipitation, Flanders is experiencing dehydration of the subsurface. A strategic location to start solving the water problem is De Wijers. This is a seepage area on the edge of the Campine Plateau where the marshlands are rapidly being drained to develop the land.\r\nBy transforming agricultural and natural areas into a paludicultural landscape, the wet biotopes are expanded, and farmers are given a sustainable earning model. Paludiculture is an innovative concept in which crops are grown on wet soils with high and strongly varying groundwater levels. In our region, this landscape can be used to produce regenerative building materials. To further develop and optimise research on this, a research centre is being built on the site where the university, together with companies and local farmers, can explore the possibilities of the new landscape. The centre is built as a prototype for the new building materials and is partly equipped as a visitor centre to introduce interested parties to the new crops. \r\nThe construction of the building rests on two main principles: the building must be a model for the use of the new regenerative materials and must be reversible. The research center is built as a temporary intervention. After the necessary research has been carried out and the local residents are familiar with this new way of growing, the building will have fulfilled its function and will be demolished. For this it is important that everything is reversible and no footprint is left behind.\r\nThe pilot project will start with a few hectares of paludal cultivation and, as the research progresses, it will expand throughout De Wijers. By transforming the landscape, the plateau’s water battery can be restored and potable water guaranteed for the future.The Wijers is now the showcase for paludiculture in Flanders. This landscape forms the pivot of research into sustainable wet cultivation and entices national and international researchers and nature lovers to visit this unique water landscape.