Vandets Veje: Kolindsund
A Landscape ‘Back to the Future’
How can we create landscapes that manage the water volumes of the future while uniting nature, agriculture, and settlement?
Climate change brings heavier rainfall and rising groundwater, creating new challenges for agriculture, local communities, and nature.
With a new interpretation of the drained lake Kolindsund, Schønherr presents new visions of the future interplay between humans and water.
Industrial Processes and Digitalisation as Tools for New Nature
The process has been an interdisciplinary development effort exploring the potential of new land distributions and multifunctional landscapes in 2050 – offering inspiration for both legislation and new collaborative models such as the “green tripartite partnership”. In the role of lead consultant, Schønherr has examined the relationship between groundwater and nature development in the landscape’s riparian zones between wet and dry areas, and analyzed which agricultural lands and properties will be affected by future water levels. Using digital simulation and analysis models as well as artificial intelligence, the project has worked with large-scale landscape planning and scenarios for transforming drained farmland into new nature on an industrialscale.
The project is part of the Vandet Veje initiative, led by the Danish Association of Architects and supported by the Dreyer Foundation. It presents new images of the landscapes of the future.
New Visions to Inspire Public Debate
The proposal highlights that nature and agriculture need not be seen as dichotomies. On the contrary, future landscapes can create value where climate adaptation, nature, production, and human activity are integrated into an ecological whole.
The visionary project Kolindsund – a Landscape Back to the Future proposes how the drained lake in Djursland can gradually be restored and become are silient landscape that combines biodiversity, food production, settlement, and recreational values.
Schønherr’s vision for Kolindsund has been developed in close collaboration with PAX Architects, LE34, art historian Jacob Wamberg, and WSP.
