Concrete in Conversation with Landscape
A collaboration with Stefan Schöning, exploring how precast concrete can belong within a landscape rather than impose itself upon it.
For the Sigma Plan and the development of the FEBE elements, the ambition with Stefan Schöning was clear: infrastructure that protects against water while remaining deeply connected to its surroundings. The concrete needed a roughness and tactility capable of blending naturally into riverbanks, embankments and tidal environments.
Through a careful balance of aggregates, texture and finish, the elements were designed to weather slowly and grow into the landscape over time. Moss, rain, shadow and erosion were treated not as enemies of the material, but as part of its palette.
The resulting precast elements have since been installed across multiple sites along the Belgian and Dutch coastlines, where they function at once as flood defence, landscape intervention and public space.
In 2025, the project Versterk de Scheldekust – Hulst received the FEBE Element Award in the category Precast in Landscape — a recognition of an approach in which engineering and landscape design reinforce one another rather than compete.
Concrete not imposed on the landscape, but shaped to belong within it.
