Sense of safety in Dutch river landscapes

Abstract

In July 2021, heavy floods hit the Dutch province Limburg after days of rainfall in south-west Germany, the Ardennes and southern Limburg. Rivers like the Geul, the Roer and the Maas couldn’t discharge the large amounts of water. Many parts of these regions flooded, and approximately 50.000 people have been evacuated from their homes (Task Force Fact Finding hoogwater 2021, 2021, pp. 8 - 10).
How safe residents feel in the river landscape is affected by the floods. The sense of safety people get from the landscape depends on how they perceive that landscape and how they perceive their safety in it. How landscape and safety are perceived relates to the relationship residents have with their landscape. Due to centralized supervision, local communities are increasingly cut-off from their water system, and they are changing from active workers to passive users. Ultimately, their knowledge of the water systems is forgotten. Another aspect of perceiving a sense of safety is related to the Dutch water management strategies. Optimizing and directing water has dominated the Dutch attitude. Engineering strategies including dikes, storm surge barriers and regulated polders are dominant in the Dutch landscape (Metz & Van den Heuvel, 2012, p. 281). With these strategies, the Dutch have outsourced their water safety to engineers and water boards. As water safety is primarily the concern of professionals, people themselves are decreasingly aware of their dependence on these defence systems, and simply perceive dikes and other defence systems as objects in the landscape (Metz & Van den Heuvel, 2012, p. 79).
As a result of this strategy, the relationship between humans and river has become a rigid one. Humans dominate water by force, pushing it away hard as possible. However, because of the changing climate water is now pushing back, which resulted in the floods of 2021. Changing how we relate to rivers, and water in general, can help to establish a new spatial relationship that is not based on dominance but rather on equality.
In light of the recent floods in Limburg, this graduation project deals with the question of perceiving a sense of safety in river landscapes. The research project deals with the leading question “What is the role of architecture in perceiving a sense of safety in Dutch river landscapes?”. Central in this project is a cycling trip from Delft to Maastricht, including research methods like interviewing, immersive analysis, sketching and annotating.
The design project deals with a public building that provides a safe evacuation centre in times of high water, while in the everyday functioning it expresses its position in the water landscape and in turn provides a lens on the water conditions in this landscape. Chapter 8 elaborates on the resulting design project, in which a permanent platform provides the base for a temporary evacuation centre. Together with other design objects (a hiking trail, a bridge, water basins) the project addresses river dynamics and flood dangers in Valkenburg aan de Geul, in Limburg.