The Pauwels Landscape Park

‘Landschapspark Pauwels’ (the Pauwels Landscape Park) provides a new impulse for the landscape situated between Tilburg and the Loonse en Drunense Duinen National Park. In the past few years the city has expanded considerably towards this agrarian landscape, but it is clear by now that the space to build homes and business premises is not unlimited.

Our bureau has joined forces with the ten partners of Landschapspark Pauwels to draw up a master plan in which all the main themes of a landscape in proximity to the city are integrated in a coherent vision for the future – from ecological networks to the storage and filtering of city water, from the development of energy generation and business estates to a sustainable future for agriculture. New functions are added, such as a new water purification park on the location of the former sewage farm; landscape elements are added to the landscape to reinforce its original structure; and the water system is equipped to face the challenges of the future by the water purification park and other means. A new route, the Pauwels Circuit, affords visitors to the landscape park the opportunity to explore the various landscapes and villages. All of the proposals make the particular cultural history of the area tangible and enhance the recreational quality of the landscape.

Tilburg wants to invest in the green quality of the city, the countryside and the relation between them with three urban regional parks. One of these parks is Landschapspark Pauwels, named after the landowner who administered a large part of this area in the Middle Ages and also built a castle here. The Pauwels landscape has a rich and colourful history and many unusual features and qualities of particular cultural historical and ecological interest. At the same time the landscape is also threadbare and untidy at many points. It is fragmented, accommodates various urban fringe functions that have barely been integrated, is intersected by major traffic infrastructure, and is relatively inaccessible for recreational visitors.

The master plan for Landschapspark Pauwels proposes to transform these 6,500 hectares into an attractive landscape park. The peculiar quality of the three landscape types (the landscape of formerly uncultivated land with heath and drifting sands, the marshy wooded landscape of Brand, and the agricultural landscape) is given stronger expression and a parklike layer is added to make the landscape more attractive for recreation. In elaborating the master plan we have linked up with a number of large-scale challenges currently facing the area, such as those connected with rendering the water system more sustainable (storage, filtering and drainage) with a view to the changing climate, linking the natural network and making it more robust, the transition in the expanding agricultural sector, the demand for clean energy generation, and a strengthening of its attractiveness for businesses. The master plan brings all these themes together in a coherent vision in which developments can be set in motion to work towards a more beautiful landscape in the future. Landschapspark Pauwels is widely supported by various parties, from government bodies to individual farmers and residents in the area, from social organisations to entrepreneurs located there. All these parties have contributed to the design of their landscape. The result is this master plan.