Slicing.

The Netherlands has developed a strong cultural tradition of landscape architecture and intervention, due to the simple fact that much of it should be underwater. Renowned for its systems of berms, levees, canals, and artificial islands built to keep out the at times violent North Sea, the country sees its geography as both a threat and a blessing. One way the low-lying landscape was turned into an advantage was through the construction of the Water Line, a series of low areas that could be intentionally flooded to protect the province of Holland, the Netherlands’s economic center, from foreign invasion. Originally built in the 16th century during the country’s war for independence from Spain, the Water Line functioned, with various additions, until the 1940’s.

Two poetic projects, the Moses Bridge (2011) and Bunker 599 (2010), seek to highlight the Water Line’s important role in Dutch history, and use the straight line and the act of slicing to contrast the variation of topography and to highlight the changeability of water levels.

Read the rest at Architizer.