Climate change is transforming the Mediterranean Sea, pushing it toward increasingly tropical conditions. This process entails challenges and risks whose intrinsic complexity spans natural and cultural dimensions, as well as the lives of human and more-than-human inhabitants. It raises questions about forms of cooperation and inclusive politics that have yet to be established.
Starting from a working hypothesis that recognises Mediterranean eco-regions as biopolitical subjects, this thesis first seeks to understand the Adriatic eco-region as an entity - mapping its body through the combined lens of its biophysical and cultural dimensions, identifying five operative transects, the Bastards, and understanding the risks brought by tropicalisation to them.
Using the Adriatic eco-region and the Po/North Adriatic transect as a laboratory, the research proposes Padania Tropicale - a transformative framework that envisions pathways of co-evolutionary transformation alongside the new conditions brought by climate change, rather than the protection of a "natural" order oriented exclusively toward human productive activities.
The thesis concludes with a methodological reflection on the biopolitical dimension of spatial planning, exploring how eco-regions and transects can operate as devices for spatialising the Rights of Nature and for building governance frameworks grounded in a co-evolutionary stewardship between humans and nature. A reflection that is still open by necessity, but sincere in its ambition to seed further research and design at the scale of the Mediterranean basin. ... Read more

Zeeland is a land of production of food, energy and resources. Its very nature is deeply rooted in the Dutch people‘s historical ability to reshape the landscape and harness its potential for economic benefit. Today, it faces slow demographic decline, is largely covered by agricultural land and sits at the heart of a thriving transnational port economy and embedded within the Delta region, an area defined by dynamism and uncertainty.

Complex processes driven by climate change - such as sea level rise, soil salinization and the depletion of soil quality - raise urgent questions about the future of many agricultural zones and the rural communities that depend on them. These are farming communities that have inhabited the region for centuries, now thrust into a structural condition of uncertainty, shaped by evolving ecological processes that are often hard to predict or fully understand.
At the same time, they are communities with clear socio-economic needs and aspirations, which sometimes clash with broader environmental pressures and global dynamics. Yet, they also hold significant potential: as landowners, they are well-positioned to convert or diversify their agricultural practices toward renewable energy production, carving out a vital role in the green economy of the future.
“What’s missing is a clear and stable vision for my future and my farm,” says Peter, a Zeeland farmer. That is exactly what Performative Landscape: A New Paradigm for Energy Transition Through Farmers’ Community Engagement and the Transformation of the Zeeland Delta Landscape seeks to offer.

Our team of designers and researchers developed a new long-term vision, ambitious yet grounded, that emerged from an intensive and focused process of research and designs. It aims to sustain regional productivity, reinforce the economic resilience of farming communities, address environmental challenges, and unlock the full potential of the land for renewable energy. It proposes a new model for productive landscapes, rooted in local consumption, circularity, economic autonomy and the integration of agriculture with clean energy generation. ... Read more