Reinier A. Gramsma

Vloeiend Veluwe

Restoration of the Netherlands’ Greatest Groundwater Reserve


The Veluwe is an area familiar to most Dutch people. Known not only as one of the Netherlands' largest nature reserves, but also frequently as a place for recreation in the form of long walks over the purple moors or weekend getaways in wooden cabins. 

A relatively underexposed feature of the greater Veluwe system are its hill slopes, which have been on a journey of exploitation and development for centuries now. This has resulted in a culture-historically rich landscape of country estates, ankle villages, brooks and (man-made) springs. 

Today, global climate changes create increasingly extreme dynamics between moments of water and drought. Dutch agricultural fields, that have over time been so carefully developed into a super profitable production landscape, are now suddenly in an untenable split - forming the context of this project. 

The striking angle of the multilayered climate issue, however, is not that it suddenly appears in the form of a downpour that lasts for days, or a drought that turns moors into wildfires. The split that this landscape has found itself in is entirely because it is a man-made landscape. Development and exploitation of the land to reduce water levels to a constant low have emptied the natural buffers that protect from seasonal and local climate changes. 

The solution lies in restoring a large groundwater bubble, with a water system designed to maintain and protect this reservoir below a landscape full of green elements interwoven with a sustainable social fabric. 

The Veluwe of the future will be able to withstand the whims of a shifting climate, in both times of abundance and nuisance of water, and in times of deficiencies and drought. 

The human hand in the past and future Veluwe landscape make this project into a great restoration project, more so than a project creating something from scratch. And as far as I am concerned, this restoration gives ample reason and opportunity to give the good and beautiful things of the past an exciting new future. 


Graduation date: 18 December 2024
Graduation committee: David Kloet (mentor), Vibeke Gieskes, Paul de Kort 
Additional members for the exam: Kim Kool, Saline Verhoeven