Cycles of Land and Water: Gradients of Re-wetting in the GlattalManuela Silva Orozco and Bartosz Wojcik
For centuries, the Glatt River valley thrived as a vast marshland defined by a rich mosaic of wet peat soils, meandering streams, and alluvial ecosystems. However, late 19th-century state-backed melioration processes systematically drained these wetlands to maximize agricultural output, drying out 90% of the wetlands in the Canton of Zürich. This engineering era established strict land uses and rigidly compartmentalized both water and soil. Today, the territory’s original wet identity is confined to the 100-hectare remnant fragment of the Neeracherried Nature Reserve. Outside this protected enclave, the borders between urban expansion, intensive agriculture, and nature are sharply drawn, masking the valley’s historical hydrology beneath standardized, uniform fields.
While the past two centuries prioritized maximum food production, rising climate risks and biodiversity loss have shifted today’s narrative toward environmental conservation and climate resilience. This project engages with this new paradigm by transforming the agricultural buffer zone surrounding the Neeracherried into a dynamic, “in-between” dry and wet landscape. Rather than enforcing static boundaries, the design embraces a diffuse, temporal re-wetting, establishing a gradient of wetness that activates a functional sponge landscape. By strategically opening and closing existing drainage infrastructure, the project aligns with seasonality and natural cyclicity, keeping local farms viable through the introduction of wet cultivation practices to ultimately reclaim the wet identity of the territory.