Back to the Future is an honour mention competition entry by m2ft for Europan in 2023. It is located in Breda Netherlands in an industrial and riverside setting. Its scale is large with a surface of 26.500 sqm.

With the “aim to explore the regenerative capacities of living milieus amidst new architectural, urban and landscape ecologies that attempt to overcome the opposition between nature and culture and anthropocentrism” (Europan 17), Back to the Future investigates the possibility of a new urban paradigm based on the symbiosis between humans and non-humans, between production and nature, to achieve the resiliency that a territory needs to face the challenges of climate change and the continuous economic-productive and health crises.

In this sense, it becomes key to acknowledge what human beings can do to restore the damages that they have created in the past, in order to establish a new balance, a new cooperation and harmony with non-humans. This holistic approach can contribute to rebalance the metabolism of the site and the near territory, restoring water cycles, damaged soils, biodiversity, wildlife and human life, preparing the “foundations” for a new regenerative urban landscape that, thanks to its resilience, will evolve autonomously over the next few years.

Through time, it is possible to understand space. This strategy follows the principles of the “Nature restoration law” by the EU in 2022, and moves away from the architectural call to turn this area into another place where the status quo is privileged revolving around just human needs as the environmental context doesn’t exist.

3129-M2F-NL-2023 — Posted in 2023 — Explore more projects on masterplan and public space — Climate: temperate and oceanic / maritime — Coordinates: 51.5951490, 4.7674769 — Team: Flavio Martella, Maria Vittoria Tesei — Views: 1.021