EASTERN SCHELDT

Deltas are of great importance to humans all over the world. Not only because 80 percent of the largest population centers are located in coastal areas, but also because it is the area where land arises from sea. An amazing gradient where two worlds meet and nature and humans proliferate traditionally. It is the area where one hears, smells and sees the awakening of nature between the ebb - and flood line. It is where the sailor exalts navigation to a form of art and where he falls dry with his boat to be alone and to enjoy the mind-expanding vastness. Yet these qualities increasingly disappear due to the great technical advances since the 19th century, which tried to control the marine dynamics of deltas to ensure safety of the hinterland against inundation. The Deltaworks in the Netherlands, built as a consequence of many historic floods in the Southwestern Delta with the flood of 1953 as a decisive event, embody this. The masterpiece of the Deltaworks meant the construction of a national icon: the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier, which does not only withstand storm surges, but even daily controls the tides of the sea in the Eastern Scheldt. However, this permeable dam has resulted in the erosion of the intertidal area, i.e. the disappearance of the delta at the provincial level. It has resulted in the insatiable demand of sand of 1,5 times the Tweede Maasvlakte, which increases annually due to sea-level rise. The intertidal area will have disappeared in about 2080 as a consequence of this sand hunger, with major social - and ecological problems as a result.

Besides sand hunger, Zeeland also suffers from space hunger. The rise of mass recreation in the past century has led to the cluttering of holiday parks in the hinterland of the delta, which destroy the orderly sublime vastness of the cultural-historical lowlands and the spacious freedom of the sea. Therefore, a holistic solution for the Zeeland delta does not only secure the intertidal area, but also encompasses the finding of a suitable place for recreation in the characteristic delta landscape of Zeeland. This is achieved by means of the deconstruction of the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier and Grevelingendam, and using the resulting new marine dynamics to promote the social - and ecological situation of the Eastern Scheldt as part of the Southwestern Delta.

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The new culturally designed coastal defense systems protect the hinterland from inundation, while it grows along with sea-level rise, and is in itself a new landscape entity of Zeeland in which the function of recreation finally becomes integrated into the landscape after a century of wandering. This way Zeeland is strengthened integrally between sea and land and the Eastern Scheldt is transformed from a nature - to a human reserve, where all interactions live together as an obviousness.