AA Landscape Urbanism  |  2018  |  M.Arch Design Thesis

Location: Lanzarote, Canary Islands
Instructors: Alfredo Ramirez, Eduardo Rico, Clara Oloriz
Collaborators: Majedeh Sayyedi, Tao Sun

Awarded Distinction Honour
Published in Landscape as Territory (2018)
Presented at Simulating Environments

With a focus on the insular territory of Lanzarote within the Canary Islands, this project embarks on a quest to study and analyse the impact of land pressure, resource dependency and insularity on a landscape.

Historically, the Canarias were an economy based solely on fishing and farming, with inhabitants having developed remarkable irrigation and agricultural techniques such as the Paso del Jable, in Lanzarote, formed by the aeolian passage of marine sand upon which arenado agriculture is possible with little or no irrigation. But with the increased reliance on trade and coastal tourism, the region is highly affected by agricultural abandonment.

This project counters this concern with a revised framework of resource management based on Agrotourism by combining approaches of policy, landscape and architectural paradigms on a multi-scalar level. We created interwoven sand mechanisms and negotiations within existing local policy frameworks to establish sustainable linkages between sectors of tourism and agriculture which are in constant conflict in Lanzarote.

The process was aimed at encouraging and incentivising regrowth of native agricultural and socio-economic activities within the hinterlands in order to enable and counterbalance the expected growth of eco-tourism within the archipelago.