Article 2 of the Europan 18 Results Catalogue
Check out the articles of the Europan 18 catalogue!
Learn more about each theme and sub-theme, through the articles of the catalogue.
Read the article “Water Territories: From Resistance to Resilience” extracted from the E18 Catalogue of Results
The article presents results from the Europan 18 competition. Authors Annelies De Nijs (BE) urban designer and cofounder of Atelier Horizon, and Céline Bodart (BE) architect and lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of Liège University and at the Paris la Villette School of Architecture, argue that contemporary urban design must shift from controlling water to inhabiting its logic, especially as climate instability intensifies. Europan 18 projects show how water can become the structural backbone of territories rather than a decorative feature or hidden utility.
They describe three key dimensions of this shift:
1-Landscape foundations: projects start by engaging with soils, topography and geomorphology, restoring hydrological functions such as infiltration, flood resilience and river continuity. Polluted soils, riverbanks and valleys are reactivated through ecological strategies like phytoremediation and seasonal water systems.
2-Territorial solidarity: rethinking water demands new governance models and ethical frameworks. Projects propose watershedbased management, civic contracts between humans and rivers, and initiatives for water justice and equal access.
3-Living metabolisms: many sites suffer from ecological and social exhaustion due to former industrial use. Projects work with longterm regeneration, new temporalities and unexpected ecological “allies” such as waste materials or insects to rebuild resilient waterscapes and socioecological systems.
Overall, Europan 18 projects reveal how territories can evolve from managing water as a threat to designing resilient, interconnected milieus where water is the vital connective tissue between ecology, society and urban form.
>> Click here to read more about the article from Annelies de Nijs and Céline Bodart