Recode the road

TEAM PORTRAIT

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW
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1. How do you define the main issues of your project in relation with the theme “Re-sourcing”? Re-sourcing thanks to nature, to social dynamics, to new materiality? In which way do you think your project can contribute to an ecological and/or social evolution? And in which way do you think your project can be called a “regenerative project”?
In “Recode the Road”, Re-sourcing means going back to the territorial systems that were there before the infrastructure: soils, water lines, habitats and agricultural landscapes. The Rhine delta is treated as the primary resource, and the L202 is understood as just one layer within it. Rather than proposing a new road or a parallel bypass, the project focuses on the existing corridor and its edges, working with the road as a technical and spatial opportunity to reconnect what it currently separates. The contribution to ecological and social evolution lies in a series of very concrete territorial operations: rebuilding soil depth and permeability along the road, reopening and reconnecting watercourses, shaping water-absorbing topographies, and defining continuous habitat corridors that accompany the L202. These measures directly influence runoff, micro-climate and biodiversity, while at the same time creating more comfortable and legible spaces for walking, cycling and staying along the route. We consider the project regenerative because it acts on the underlying conditions that support life in the long term—ground, water, vegetation and everyday access—rather than simply mitigating the negative effects of traffic. By using the existing road as a catalyst for territorial repair, *Recode the Road* aims to restore ecological continuity and offer a more generous shared landscape for both human and non-human actors.

2. How did the issues of your design and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?
In the L202 corridor, the “site mutation” is already visible: increasing traffic and logistics pressure, more frequent climatic stresses and gradual changes in agricultural and settlement patterns. Our design questions met these mutations by treating them not as separate problems, but as different expressions of the same territorial condition. The analytical framework of solid / fluid / biotic allowed us to translate traffic growth into questions of soil sealing and safety, climate risks into hydrological continuity and storage capacity, and land-use change into the need for robust ecological corridors.

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