Woeste Grond
Project details
- Year
- 2024
- Programme
- Bachelor – Spatial Design
- Practices
- Honours Programme
- Minor
- Visual Culture
Towards a wild urban future
Is there, in a world where everything is meticulously planned and designed with humans at the center, a lively awareness of the relationality to our natural environment, to which we are inextricably linked to and dependent on through our systems and infrastructures?
The publication ‘Woeste grond’ explores through a mosaic of stories and ideas how we can rewild the city and or ourselves.
It is a search for an alternative to the homogenizing impact that humans have on the natural environment through urbanization. By designing cities to suit human functionality and aesthetics, there is little room for greenery, and even the parks and green spaces where ‘nature’ has a place are often intensively planned and designed. How can we, through an alternative approach of living and designing relate differently to nature through the built environment – the dimension and realm of our daily lives?
Urban wastelands serve as metaphor and a source of inspiration for this wild urban future. The ‘novel ecosystems’ that emerge at these sites show vegetation which developes completely independent from human interference.
Not only is the ecology of these types of areas of academic interest; it furthermore demonstrates an alternative in an urban environment where spontaneous vegetation and wild nature would otherwise have no place.
Woeste Grond is a collection of stories and ideas, bringing together perspectives from various professionals who all question the relationship between the city and (wild) nature. Ecologists, biologists, and scientists from other fields such as applied psychology, as well as designers, campaigners, visionaries, artists, and guerrilla gardeners explore the oppurtunities to bring these apparent opposites together.
