Author: Openact Architecture Team: Zuhal Kol, Carlos Zarco Sanz, Sara Palomar, Jose Luis Hidalgo. Type: Europan 13 International Competition Location: Streefkerk, Netherlands Status: Second award (Runner-up) Period: July 2015 Dikes in general draw a coastline as set by the boundary between water and land; this at once expresses and reinforces an attitude about the way that humans use and occupy littoral terrain, which privileges certain programs — while excluding the possibility of other programs — such as an economy based on the biological productivity of the fluctuating gradient of water/s or social daily life activities that can occur on/around the water. In Streefkerk as well, the boundary created by the dike is predominant and eliminates potential mutuality. Therefore, the proposal focuses on the reciprocal programmatic, economic, ecologic, socio-cultural relationships between land and water by asking ‘how an infrastructure to block, can be developed to connect’, and aims to utilize the resultant conversation central to organizing a prototype-PROTODIKE- infrastructure of an alternate urbanism and land use which can be adapted and implemented in varying locations for dike reinforcements in the Dutch Delta. To re-open the possibilities that a more complex understanding of the relationship between land and water would permit, the Protodike is established on two deceptively single moves of groins and stripes: while groins trigger an explosion of biodiversity and productivity by generating sedimentation in the inner bend, and also offer more space for water related public activities and water transportation, the stripes are formed through the dike rather than running parallel to the dike creating and initiating plots of encounters between water and land to conceive dynamic coexistence of diverse activities.