Enrike van Wingerden awarded Convergence Kick-Starter Grant for Climatorium Project

The project explores how climate adaptation can be experienced through landscape, memory, and movement. Set on the flood-prone island of Goeree-Overflakkee - a place shaped by the catastrophic North Sea flood of 1953 and the ongoing pressures of sea level rise – Open-Air Climatorium the Dutch Delta creates an embodied way for communities to engage with climate change. By guiding participants along a walking trail with interpretative points and landscape performances, the project transforms environmental knowledge into lived experience.

The Climatorium trail connects environmental history, spatial design, and sensory engagement with the aim of making climate adaptation tangible and personal. Drawing from walking methodologies, landscape architecture, and coastal engineering, the project invites collective reflection on the region’s flood past and uncertain future. Along the way, performances create playful, affective encounters with the landscape and deepen participants’ connection to place.

The project brings together researchers from the Erasmus University Rotterdam (Environmental History and Politics) and TU Delft (Landscape Architecture, Coastal Engineering) as well as societal partners at the Watersnoodmuseum, Deltares, Studio Inscape, Entrance – Centre of Expertise Energy, and the Zuidwestelijke Delta. Through transdisciplinary collaboration, the project develops a “living blueprint” for future participatory climate initiatives in the Dutch Delta.