Site & Context
Køge Bay's polder farmland sits below mean sea level, held dry by a dike built in 1971. The dike was designed against the storms of its century, not the ones arriving in this one. Three kilometres of embankment now stand between a working landscape and a rising bay — a line drawn in the wrong place for the water we actually have.
Behind the dike, drainage canals keep a mosaic of grazing land and reed remnants artificially dry. In front of it, the last fragments of salt marsh are being starved of the sediment that once let them keep pace with the tide.
Fig. 03 — Site photographs: dike crest, drainage canal, remnant reedbed.
Concept & Strategy
Rather than raise the dike again, the proposal sets it back 180 metres and lets the reclaimed ground re-become a working tidal edge — engineered enough to protect what's behind it, wild enough to build its own sediment.
"To retreat well is to design the terms of arrival."
- ▲Terraced marsh stepsAbsorb tidal surge in stages rather than a single wall.
- ■Relocated dike lineSet back 180 m, rebuilt to a lower, gentler profile.
- ●Grazing meadow, transitionalSalt-tolerant pasture that can convert to marsh over decades.
- ◆Sediment intake channelReopens tidal exchange the drainage system had shut off.
Design Proposal
Drag the marker below to compare the current dike line against the proposed retreat — the same section, forty years apart.
Reflection
The thesis argues that retreat is a design problem, not an admission of failure — that a dike set back and terraced can do more protective work than one built higher. What it leaves open is who pays for the transition, and over what timeline a grazier gives up dry pasture for a tidal one.