Delta Interventions Graduation Studio 2017-2018

• TU Delft Interdisciplinary Research Programme I 2017-18
• Location: North Sea, EU
• Host/In collaboration with: TU Delft, RCA Royal College of Art, London, AA School Architecture, London, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Het Nieuwe Instituut
• Status:  Exhibited in “North Sea Landscapes of Coexistence – Final Symposium” in TU Delft in July 2018

The starting point of this report is borrowed from Jason Moore’s statement on the binary Nature-Society:

“[..] nature is not “just there.” It is historical.” (2015, p.12).

In the light of climate change, eco-services derangement and weakening of local economies in the name of globalisation and free trade, capitalism has almost exhausted its source of nourishment: Nature. Fossil fuel depletion, pollution and post-industrial landscapes are representative of this tendency and ask for insightful, yet daring solutions.North  Sea couldn’t be an exception to this tendency, with the Dutch-Flemish Delta having the least favourable position in terms of flooding risk, pollution and ecosystems instability, yet also the most advantageous role regarding port infrastructure and flows processing capacity. A peculiar contradiction like this is seen as an opportunity to embrace and a basis for projective solutions. Having said that, this is exactly what this research aims at: overturning a negative output of our current economic model into an input for new productive landscapes, while enhancing the adaptive capacity of local economies, ecosystems and socio-spatial constructs.

MOORE, J. 2015.
Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital.
London: Verso.