WORKING TOWARDS A COMMON OBJECTIVE

For a lively fortified heritage

The “Septentrion” project brought French, Belgian and Dutch partners together around the following concept: “from the fortified to the sustainable town”. Opening up the project to new Dutch and British partners allows for a broader approach to the question: more wide-ranging exchange will continue the work initiated by Septentrion, encouraging partners to learn more about each other and establishing a joint reflection on the modern-day notion of “borders”. The scope of action is twofold: “landscape and ecological management of sites” and “interpretation, enhancing and promoting cultural and tourist value”. 

The sites included in the project offer the potential to contribute to the regeneration of each town through the application of transferable ecological and landscaping principles (ecological development of Fort Duffel experimenting “differentiated management”, protecting biodiversity, the landscape and water in all different forms), as well as providing heritage-based recreational and leisure areas (creation of a landscape garden at the Château d’Hardelot).

Once closely guarded frontiers, Vauban’s Pré Carré and other fortified sites have been turned into platforms for exchange, open to tourism and neighbouring cultures.
In this way, the “Walls and Gardens” project fosters the notion of developing fortified heritage as “living” heritage, from the point of view of biodiversity as well as through the creation of new cultural and everyday living spaces.