Integrated Nodal Estate Landscape: Reconnecting Baakse Beek Brook Eco-system & Recreation through Estate Landscape Development

Estate landscapes are vulnerable to climate change. Especially regarding water management, these landscapes face severe challenges regarding shortage and abundance of water, which affects the gardens, ecosystem, forestry and agriculture of these estates. Also, many estates are still inaccessible and remain unknown to the broader public. This research focusses on the estate landscape of the Baakse Beek region while developing a spatial strategy that takes the natural brook ecosystem and the recreational system as the basis for a more resilient and future proof estate landscape. The brook ecosystem here is typical for the sandy grounds in the East of the Netherlands and was a base condition for the allocation of estates, while the recreational system refers to a balanced-interaction among humans, culture, and nature. It’s worthy to note that the estate landscapes, which have formed in Eastern Netherlands since the 16th Century, was always a balanced integration of these two systems. Over time the relation of the brook ecosystem and recreational system changed dramatically and grow apart due to sectoral developments that focussed solely on the agricultural optimization of the water system or economic development of recreation. This thesis mainly researched and proposed approaches how to develope the estates landscapes and surroundingd as several nodes to integrate the brook ecosystem and recreational system again.KaDEr research projectArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Landscape Architectur