The Flood, theme of the second International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, is expressed in the three main Biennale exhibitions: The Water City, Mare Nostrum, and Polders. These examine urban developments in relation to water. Mare Nostrum surveys the development of the bathing resort since the nineteenth century, and devotes particular attention to today’s coastlines that are swamped by tourism. Mare Meum, part of the Mare Nostrum exhibition, presents a full spatial approach to both the urban and natural landscapes. The GAUFRE team introduces a new approach to the exploitation of the North Sea. FLC extended simulates a spatial scenario for the man-made landscape between Calais and the Scheldt estuary.
Mare Meum
The Belgian Atlantic Wall separates the sea from the polder landscape almost uninterruptedly. All 67 kilometres of the Belgian coast have been subjected to total tourist development held together by the coastal road and the coastal tram route. This coastline, propelled by speculation, private initiative and pragmatism, has transformed into an elongated but extremely narrow urban entity. The pressure imposed on this ribbon city and the landscape behind it by exclusive housing, (mass) tourism, leisure and recreation continues to increase. The hinterland is gradually being taken over by agrarian tourism, holiday villages and recreation in the landscape. But the sea too can potentially be put to use. Seascaping has already made its appearance. It is high time there was a full spatial approach to both the urban and natural landscapes. In this exhibition two teams deal with the different aspects of this new challenge.
Atlas of the sea, an analysis for planning | GAUFRE research team
The designers in the GAUFRE team from the Maritime Institute at Ghent University present an Atlas of the Sea. For years, planners all over the world have been planning with their backs to the sea.These planners have been considering the sea as a vast surface of water, an empty space against which we should protect ourselves and which can be exploited without limitations. Examples of this approach are the ‘Belgian Atlantic Wall’ or the Dutch Delta works.Yet the sea is an important factor in the development of any coastal area or delta. Future ambitions require a plan for the Belgian part of the North Sea.
In the GAUFRE project, the University of Gent initiated a new attitude towards planning at sea.This new form of planning is sea-oriented, taking into account the differences between sea and land and their interactions. This exhibition explains, starting from the analysis of the sea, what is so peculiar for planning at sea.
First there is the concept of Mare Liberum. In the 17th century a Dutch jurist introduced the ‘Mare Liberum’ concept.This means that the sea belongs to no one, and should be free for all pioneers and explorers. Seas became common and free, but at the same time this was the start of an uncontrolled exploitation of the sea. On land, ownership is the starting point of each form of planning. But ownership doesn’t exist at sea and due to the entrenched principle of the Mare Liberum, each user considers the sea as his own territory to use or to explore.
A second notion is the acceptance of conflicts on the sea and the fact that some decisions or uses will exclude others.
Thirdly, planning has to be introduced. Some activities are already regulated at sea: the international shipping lanes, zones for military use, sand and gravel extraction, fishing. These regulations are limited to arranging the existing uses with sectoral rules and legal procedures. But the sea also became an area to locate activities that couldn’t stay on land. It became a dumping site for historic war ammunition or hazardous waste. The idea of the sea as a big open space that can serve for those things we want to get rid of on landside has to stop. Sea-oriented planning is the answer.
The following notion is the acceptance that the North Sea is a system that does not bother about territorial borders. The water and its living organisms do not bother about territory. Neither do pollution or waste. So specific issues of the Belgian part of the North Sea should be considered into the framework of the whole North Sea, and for some issues, even beyond that.
The fifth consideration is about the three dimensions of the sea. Its dynamics make the sea very unpredictable, but it’s even more complex if you consider the different dimensions of the sea: seabed, water column and air. That’s why at sea different activities can take place at the same time and sometimes the same place.These three dimensions are also very intertwined: fishing for example is an activity in the contact zone between air and water, but it can have a big influence on the seabed, due to nets dragging over the surface.
Finally one has to accept the lack of data on the sea. Even if one has access to all the data available - the Belgian North Sea is one of the most researched seas in the world - we still know little about its dynamics and interactions on ecosystems life. This lack of knowledge means that we cannot estimate the precise impact of new functions.We still need a lot of research and monitoring to be able to take well-founded decisions about the future of the sea.
M.U.D | FLC extended
The second part of the exhibition is the result of a design research commissioned by the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi). The FLC-extended design team simulates a spatial scenario for the man-made landscape between Calais and the Scheldt estuary. Every metre of the 67 km of the Belgian coast is heavily exploited and considered by its users to be a highly personal possession. A possession to whose many aspects they simultaneously lay claim.
The Belgian coast is for individual consumers and is in no way attached to any sort of sense of collective responsibility whatsoever. Where hyper-individualism and the economy of experience intersect, that’s where Mare Nostrum becomes Mare Meum. Mare Meum, ‘my own personal sea’, is under threat, and with it the illusion of the enchanting world for which we, the consumers of experience, are constantly in search. With the possibility of a deluge and a number of social phenomena at the back of our minds, a manipulated satellite picture crystallizes, on a tapestry, the premonition of a new era, one of mud. In the MUD era there are ongoing negotiations over the dividing lines that were formerly fixed boundaries. Boundaries between water, land and air and also between use and development. In the MUD era concessions to the rising water are compensated by risk management and local super-defences. And each point within the MUD barrier zone is capable of transforming or upgrading itself economically, culturally and socially.
This image is not a scenario for the distant future. It shows explicitly what is already under development – though scattered and fragmented – or is being kept under control. The division of land on the polders, the flooded fields after a downpour, the over-subsidization of agriculture, the holiday villages and tropical resorts, the reports on the coastal defence strategy, the urban beaches.These elements all had a significant influence on the creation of the final picture.
Flood / capsular society / hyper-economy
Three global trends as the basis for a local scenario
The design team picked up on three social trends as usable ingredients. Although floods, the capsular society and the hyper-economy are contemporary concepts, it has not yet been established to what extent they will influence the future. However, they do provide three original angles to look forward from the existing reality to a possible reality.
(1) What if we were not to stick to a strict dividing line but, instead of reinforcing the dyke, allow water and land to fight for their own territory? In this scenario the borderline would change into a transitional area in which the surf is free to play with time and space. The following perimeters might be used to fix the conflict zone behind the dyke: the line marking the expected rise in sea level; the original polder landscape and the corresponding Pleistocene geological substratum; the historical territory of Flanders; the geographical zone where the beaches of fine sand are deposited. When the highwater line moves inland, the resources not deployed for the additional reinforcement of the dykes would be invested in disaster management. Depending on the landscape behind, the sea gushes or seeps through dyke breaches into the controlled flood areas.
(2) A second possible reality is breaking through the line of the coastal defences and influences the capsular development of the coastal towns. Where major breaches of the dyke ensure the connection to the flood area, urban conurbations arise that throw up defences like a stronghold. As capsules in a landscape of water and mud, these fortified coastal beach towns can continue to develop their own identity without interference: Ostend – cultural paradise; Blankenberge – family resort; Knokke-Heist-Duinbergen – luxury island. The installation of a flood area creates an inland coastal front with regular if not constant views of the sea. Towns in this zone can develop into water-based towns. Motorways to this new coast are enclosed by dykes. Large-scale infrastructures will here and there attach themselves to their turn-offs. They will house accommodation, catering and shopping facilities but can also be transformed into sick-bays, relief centres and bases for emergency services.
(3) In the West the accent is shifting from an oversupply of standardized products to a less material level: that of the idea, the design and the experience. The term ‘hyper-economy’ refers to this vaporization of the economy. The evolution from a commodity economy to a data and service economy means that the role of the polders as an agricultural area – the reason this area was reclaimed from the sea – is now outdated. The context of a dynamic sea-land conflict may lend support to the hyper-economy. In the flood zone, ground-based production is replaced by an invisible grid – an idea for possible economic development. To give one example, an eco-energetic floating field might attach itself to the grid, moving with the rhythm of the sea and using or converting this movement into an economic process. This grid might be the mooring for a floating university. It might be a drilling platform, a software company or a hotel. Everything is changeable within the grid: every point can at any time enter into relations with any other point(s). And any point can at any time change its nature and function, depending on circumstances. The hyper-economic grid is more of a concept than a material structure.
Conclusion
M.U.D stands for mud, the substance that is a mixture of water and land. But M.U.D also stands for Multi-Users Dimension. When territory and ownership are subject to the dynamics of the sea, newly interested parties negotiate again and again on varying points inside the conflict zone. There are capsules, as atmospheric bastions of control and self-defence. And there is the regularly flooded outer area, where possibilities appear and disappear and where control is always relative. Mare Meum spreads out. That which is not wanted or claimed by anyone, which is sometimes the case and sometimes not, cannot be set down in rules. That creates freedom.
Project team
Katrien Vandermarliere - director VAi
Roeland Dudal - project manager VAi
Carl Bourgeois, Marc Godts and Wim Van Der Vurst - design, visualization and scenography
Nel Janssens, Charlotte Geldof and Koen Pauwels - research and feedback on behalf of FLC extended, free associating designers, Brussels.
Peter Vanden Abeele (architect engineer and urban planner), An Vanhulle (architect and urban planner) and Frank Maes (PhD in Law) on behalf of the GAUFRE research team, Maritime Institute, Ghent University.
Practical information
International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2005 – The Flood
from May 27th to June 26th 2005
press preview May 25th | official opening May 26th
Mare Nostrum – Mare Meum
Las Palmas, Wilhelminakade 66-68, Rotterdam
The exhibition Mare Meum is commissioned and realized with the support of the Minister of Culture, Youth, Sports and Brussels of the Flemish Community for the International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam 2005. Mare Meum is the Flemish Contribution in Mare Nostrum and is a production of the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi).
with the support of Lano Carpets, Harelbeke, www.lano.be