In 1985, when the work on the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier was complete, plans to dismantle the artificial work islands and construction docks were abandoned due to lack of funding. Five years later, the State Department for Roads and Waterways commissioned West 8 for a proposal to transform the sand depots into artificial dunes.

Adriaan Geuze is the founder and principal of West 8-an office of landscape architects and urban planners. "I am Dutch, and thus was born in a country with a very special relationship with nature," Geuze states. The knowledge that the contemporary landscape is, for the most part, artificial allows this office the freedom to respond by positing its own narrative spaces. The basic ingredients are ecology, infrastructure, weather conditions, building programs and people. Their aim is to incorporate the awareness of these various aspects in a playful optimistic manner that stimulates the desire to take possession of space.

"The client asked us to turn it into an artificial dunescape and to plant it with all kinds of dune grasses and so forth," Geuze explains. "For me this was really dramatic, because it meant that people would not watch the water and the whole ecosystem. Rather a very strange man-made phenomenon…Dune landscapes are found in nature, but in different spots-not in the middle of the seas."