"Expanded Effects of Re-naturalisation gestures"

A large amount of E17 awarded projects are calling for a re-naturalization of existing grounds. Whether it is the former industrial soils or the infrastructural sites, the riverbeds or -banks, the urban squares or in-between spaces, what is at stake for each situation is the restoration of a balance between human settlements and non-human dynamics. Even more, with a closer look at the E17 projects of this topic, it appears that the re-naturalization gesture is not claimed as an end in itself. Not a proper goal, it is rather a linking mean, a local intervention sticking together the various spatial and temporal pieces of the overall transformation.
The re-naturalization becomes a strategic part of new transforming processes, animated by the will to shift and trouble the dominant narratives inherited from decades of massive urbanization of living milieus. Such processes insist on the necessary renewal of the principles guiding the urban design, giving rise to a refreshed set of actions verbs: how can the re-naturalization gestures orientate alternative ways to thicken and soften the project footprint? To gather various voices, concerns, and interests – both human and non-human? The E17 session offers to rethink how the re-naturalization gestures embedded into the project-process can generate new narrative of urban transformations.