For Co/Lab: Restoring the Balance Together, social designer Fides Lapidaire has been selected to work on this challenge alongside Heijmans and the system partners involved. She is exploring how new forms of collaboration can contribute to shared ownership and a healthy water balance.
This challenge requires more than technical solutions. Different parties are responsible at different stages and have different interests. As a result, the water challenge can sometimes seem to belong to everyone and to no one.
A breakthrough lab for water
With this Co/Lab, Heijmans wants to create space for different perspectives and new forms of collaboration.
“We see the Co/Labs as breakthrough labs,” says Heijmans. “Design expertise helps us question what we take for granted, let go of assumptions and look at a challenge with an open mind.”
Buitenplaats Kraaijenberg in Vught provides the concrete case study for the Co/Lab. Heijmans is exploring whether a new neighbourhood could be developed here. The area consists of both higher- and lower-lying land. This raises the question of how to prevent flooding in the lower areas while avoiding drought in the higher areas. At the same time, the case makes visible just how many different parties need to be involved to achieve a healthy water balance.
Meet Fides Lapidaire
Fides Lapidaire makes complex societal challenges tangible by connecting unexpected perspectives with lived experiences. Through imagination and humour, she uncovers new questions and gets people moving. In her previous project Bodies of Water, she used interactive swimwear to make the quality of Dutch bathing water visible.
"I focus on how we experience urgent problems, in order to bring their vulnerability back into view."
Within Co/Lab: Restoring the Balance Together, she is not only exploring how the water system works, but, more importantly, what happens between people, organisations and interests. The first step is to examine existing collaborations, roles and obstacles. She will then work with the parties involved to develop guiding concepts for shared ownership.
A different way of working together
In 2027, the insights from this research phase will be translated into concrete interventions, ways of working and tools. In this way, restoring the water balance does not begin with a single solution, but with a different way of working together.
