Research

Atelier Planet Texel

2012 – 2014

The main focus of the IABR Atelier Planet Texel was on how the different ambitions of Texel – principally the further growth of the mainly tourist-oriented economy, the aim to realize energy neutrality and a higher level of self-sufficiency, and the sustainment of the unique natural environment and high quality of living of the inhabitants – can be optimally integrated in a wide-ranging spatial plan.

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I see for you. Photo: Hans Peter Föllmi
    • Credits

The municipality of Texel, keen to sustainably develop the island, stands to take crucial decisions on a wide range of issues and policies, all of them with spatial reverberations. How can the flows of water, waste, traffic and tourists be optimized, preferably in conjunction with each other? By which means can the development of the natural environment and the landscape drive this process? And how can the island’s ecological and economic agendas, in particular with regard to the further development of the touristic-leisure product, strengthen instead of obstruct each other?

Seasonal recreation in a new sweet water retention landscape. Image: Atelier Planet Texel

For a period of eighteen months, islanders, entrepreneurs, community organizations, different municipal departments, City Council and Board participated in the Project Atelier Planet Texel, giving their input, discussing the results and working together with the designers and experts that the IABR brought to Texel.

The Atelier has resulted in a vision for Texel embraced by all stakeholders. This vision of a sustainable future which the islanders can gradually work towards offers a productive framework for current plans and projects. The so-called Texel Principles, developed by the Atelier, provide clear guidelines for action and offer tools to make abstract concepts such as 'quality' tangible.

The proposals for pilot projects in a.o. De Koog, Nieuweschild and Polder Waal en Burg, elaborated in the Atelier by the design offices FARO Architects and LA4SALE, not only demonstrate the effects of the vision in specific locations but can also be implemented immediately.

73% electrical power (wind and solar) and 18% biofuel (seaweed) generated in a coast protection bay. Image: Atelier Planet Texel

In the film Planet Texel, alderman Eric Hercules explains how the challenges the island is facing in the areas of climate, energy, agriculture and tourism can become development opportunities.

Planet Texel is one in a series of short videos commissioned by the IABR for its sixth edition, IABR 2014, Urban by Nature.

director: Alexander Oey
producer: George Brugmans

The results of the atelier were on show from 29 May until 24 August 2014, in A Planet Cultivated, one of the exhibitions at the biennale Urban by Nature in the Kunsthal Rotterdam.

After the research by design trajectory and the presentation of the plans and proposals, the ball was in the City Council’s court. Which on December 17, 2014, unanimously approved the advice of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to adopt the results of Atelier Planet Texel in their entirety and use them as a guide for the development of the island.

On April 23, 2015, the Board of B&W appointed Atelier Planet Texel's studio master, landscape architect and IABR 2014 curator Dirk Sijmons, as Texel's first Advisor on Spatial Quality.