Climate adaptation, energy transition and urban growth: our historical heritage faces many challenges. How can you best deal with that? Scientists in the municipality of Westerveld are busy working on this. Today experts came together and two new investigations in the Colonies of Benevolence were kicked off.
“I have two PhD students with different research areas. One looks at the Colonies of Benevolence and the other looks at large agricultural landscapes, such as the Weerribben-Wieden and the esdorpen landscape of Vledder and the surrounding area,” says Dr. Elyze Storms-Smeets, associated at the University of Wageningen. She focuses, among other things, on the scientific development of methods related to Cultural Heritage and Spatial Participative Development.
“We are fortunate in the colonies that there are quite a lot of archives. But we are also looking for new sources. For example, people may still have photo albums or diaries of their parents or grandparents at home, which show what it was like to be a farmer. are in this area. We do it together with the residents and want to learn from each other.”
Storms-Smeets describes the two studies, which will take another 3.5 years, as historical and design-oriented. “We want to learn from the past and use that knowledge to design for the future. It’s about presenting a newer approach to heritage. We don’t look at a colony home or a school as an object, but as part of a larger whole.” Then, for example, it also concerns the landscape structure and how did something function as a system?”
If it is up to Storms-Smeets, today’s meeting will immediately bear fruit. “Hopefully all those people will take something of our approach with them to their own town hall or farm and look at their own living environment in a different way.”