Islands exist in geographical isolation, with limited natural resources, and surrounded by the vastness of the sea. However, their metabolic profiles are often shaped by fluctuating socio-economic systems shaped by international tourism influxes, creating circular pressure on already strained domestic socio-ecological systems. The relationship between tourism and metabolism has led to their development as import-oriented systems, highly reliant on external regions and broad infrastructuralization. The transition from agropastoralism to a service economy hyper-connected the area with the world but created local disconnections, with the imports- and infrastructure-based systems providing an illusion that resources are infinite, disclosing the complications of limitless growth.

The project addresses these challenges by examining the Cyclades at the local, regional, and global scale, appropriate to the various scales of metabolic flows. By adopting a multi-scalar approach to exploring island metabolism, it examines the notion of urban metabolism through its spatial footprint. Using islands as the tool for experimental conceptualization highlights the burden of infinite development by shedding light on the hidden metabolism that supports life in such geographies. The methodology includes examining historical transitions, mapping metabolic dependencies, exploring projective metabolic capacities of the islands, and proposing an alternative organizational structure and a cross-scalar design approach for landscape-based interventions.

Centering on the Cyclades archipelago and the Santorini island complex, the project investigates the impacts of seasonal tourism on island metabolism and the landscape’s role in rethinking the metabolic systems. Given the insufficiency of state policy in addressing the challenges, this proposal aims to shift the dynamics by exploring an imaginary through which metabolism-related activities could indirectly control tourism.

In this context, the project proposes the restoration, reactivation, adaptation, transformation, or addition of metabolic structures to revitalize dormant landscapes, promote inter-island collaboration, and blend production with consumption zones. The findings highlight the aftermath of dependency on a seasonal tourism economy and a fully outsourced or infrastructuralized metabolism. Rather than offering fixed solutions, it proposes adaptable structures that could initiate the change, aiming to raise awareness about scarcity and the need for behavioral change. By looking at the landscape as infrastructure, inspired by its past function, the project proposes the full utilization of it as part of the island metabolism, incorporating aspects of situated and artisanal knowledge, commoning, and care as an alternative to current carrying capacity assessments. Through spatial prototypes, it aims to elaborate further on these structures and their manifestation in space, emphasizing that the system is flexible and can be partially or fully adapted.

Overall, it highlights the potential of reactivating currently dormant but previously operationalized landscapes, fostering archipelago collaboration, and embracing the biospheric systems as active players in shaping flexible metabolisms.

Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas have provided the vast majority of energy used by our globalising civilisation. The rapid growth in energy use in the past 250 years has led to increasing fossil fuel usage, which has been the primary driver behind the ongoing climate emergency. Policy measures in the Netherlands aiming to reduce the country’s carbon emissions have so far been insufficient because of a lack of visioning and concrete strategies. A primary source of the persistent emissions is the Port of Rotterdam, which acts as Europe’s fossil fuel gateway as well as the most polluting port in the continent, due to the excessive petrochemical activities. The pollution is one of the causes of climate change, which threatens the Dutch landscape with possible extreme sea level rise and weather conditions. The main objective of this report is to imagine a carbon-neutral post-fossil fuel future where the changing water landscape is considered, and the Port-region of Rotterdam adopts a decentralised energy system by 2100.

Historical and social analysis of the ports’ position in the energy system together with the current policies of the energy transition was used to formulate goals and a conceptual framework. By using scenario building for uncertainties and their evaluation, a final vision of an inclusive energy transition was developed. To achieve the desirable systemic shift, this report outlines a set of development strategies through toolkits, new policies, and strategic sites namely in the Port of Rotterdam, Zeeland, Dordrecht, and the Green Heart. A detailed example of Port of Rotterdam is chosen to illustrate how specific actors can define the new energy-inclusive built environment.

This report aims to outline a transition pathway from the polluting and exclusive energy system towards a decentralised, sustainable, and carbon-neutral energy system that empowers communities and individuals in the Eurodelta region. A crucial element of the project is the establishment of a resilient energy system, taking in the consideration of sea level rise and worsening climate situation expected in the next decades. The integration of renewable energy, nature-based water management solutions and redevelopment of obsolete fossil-fuel scapes will transform the ports, urban centres, and peri-urban areas into a dispersed energyscape. This way, the new energyscape is inclusive and adaptive, allowing people to have a voice in their energy production while also being more in touch with nature.