Kunstloc Brabant launches Design Challenge WaterWerkt in het Dommeldal, in which the historic watermill landscape is approached as the key to future-proof water and landscape policy.

With this challenge, the organisation aims to demonstrate how creative professionals, such as designers and artists, can play a meaningful role in collaboration with heritage and landscape experts in addressing urgent issues surrounding climate adaptation, heritage preservation, and future-proof agriculture. Once again this year, former Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade will chair the professional jury.

Why this Design Challenge?

The Dommel Valley, and more broadly the Brabant stream valleys, form a crucial but vulnerable link in the regional water system. Climate change is causing greater dynamics: periods of drought, peak discharges, desiccation of agricultural land and pressure on ecological connections. Historically, the watermill complex – with weirs, stream valley systems and sophisticated water regimes – offered integrated solutions for water regulation and biodiversity. That knowledge and approach has largely been overshadowed by modern water management. With WaterWerkt in het Dommeldal, Kunstloc Brabant, in collaboration with Van Gogh National Park, Brabants Landschap and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the United Kingdom, among others, wants to give this knowledge a place in the present and the future.