Facing The Tide
Challenging the prevailing perspectives on flood risk management by re-imagining the existing flood management in the Scheldt Estuary as a tool to harmonise human and non-human processes.
C.D. Voncken (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Luca Iuorio – Mentor (TU Delft - Environmental Technology and Design)
Laura Cipriani – Mentor (TU Delft - Landscape Architecture)
R.A. Gorny – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Theory, Territories & Transitions)
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Abstract
This thesis challenges the dominant paradigm of flood risk management in the Netherlands, which has led to rigid and technocratic landscape practices. The research reimagines flood management as a driver of socio-ecological transformation rather than a threat to be controlled. The thesis tests this approach in The Scheldt Estuary. The study investigates how deactivating existing flood defences might enable new relationships between human and non-human systems. And, how it would reshape the delta as a living and adaptive landscape. It does this through spatial analysis, design exploration and critical reflection.
Four research questions guide this exploration, addressing: - The historical and social narratives underpinning Dutch coastal management; - The projected ecological and spatial consequences of returning to Deltaic Conditions; - The potential of design to reframe flooding from a threat into a generative force; - And, the strategic pathways to foster symbiosis between human and non-human ecosystems.
Three design scenarios illustrate how different levels of engagement with tidal processes (retreat, adaptation, and cohabitation) could inform a new form of “Tidal Urbanism.” An approach that is responsive to changing conditions while remaining sensitive to deltaic contexts. This approach serves as the base for the vision . The thesis concludes with a vision for the Scheldt Estuary in 2130. It imagines a landscape that has shed human boundaries and embraced its identity as a marshland. Flood management evolves into an adaptive system of flow regulation. Coastal design becomes an act of radical co-creation, where humans and non-humans shape space together. Rather than resisting change, this vision welcomes the tide. It offers a future built not on control, but on coexistence. Transformations that would arise from this vision are explored, such as tidal reintegration, modular and delta-sensitive urbanism. The realisation of this vision demands radical changes in space as well as in governance and organisation.
Ultimately, this project reframes resilience not as the elimination of risk, but as the capacity to live with uncertainty; ethically, iteratively and collectively.