70NEW DUTCH ARCHITECTURE
THE FIGURES are now in: 2024 was officially the hottest on record, according to a January 2025 report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). But while some parts of the world suffered extreme drought and catastrophic wildfires, for most in northern Europe and the US, it was rain that caused the greatest disturbance. ‘Tis year we saw record-breaking rainfall and flooding events and terrible loss of life in so many countries, causing heartbreak to communities on every continent,’ says WMO secretary general Celeste Saulo. Why would a warmer world mean a wetter
world? Tat question was answered succinctly in a 22 November 2024 episode of Te Climate Question on BBC World Service radio, by BBC weather forecaster Louise Lear: ‘A warmer atmosphere has the ability to hold more moisture, and therefore when it rains we are tending to see more significant rain events. You will have wetter seasons across the globe that now (bring) phenomenal amounts of rainfall.’ Te horrendous flash floods in Valencia in November drove that point home vividly – with a year’s worth of rain falling in eight hours. What does this mean for our homes and
cities? Before we head for the highlands should we take encouragement from the way the world’s most progressive coastal country is responding? Te Netherlands has well over a third of its land mass below sea level at any one time, having reclaimed as much as 50% of it (18,000km2
) from the sea over the last
centuries. But thanks to a sophisticated system of dikes, pumps and sand dunes, you almost never hear its name in the litany of countries suffering flooding. Instead, it has turned its main geographic
vulnerability into one of its biggest assets, with Dutch architects, landscape designers and engineers in demand all around the world for their expertise in flood resilience. Te Netherlands, it seems, has a national strategy that is anything but fearful of water; instead, the philosophy seems to be to work with and around the elements, enjoying the positive aspects of co-location while mitigating against the worst. And one of its most effective moves – turning the majority of its 100km-plus coastline over to extensive dunes and beaches, rather than hard infrastructure – has been so effective in demonstrating the benefits of a more ‘porous’ approach to the public realm, it is now being copied in cities around the world. And now these engineers, having
demonstrated how good they are at reverse engineering coastlines for human benefit, are seeing if they can retro-engineer in order to bring greater benefit nature, in one of the biggest nature restoration projects in the
PHOTOS: MVRDV / LUXIGON
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