This project sets out to improve the way intensive pig farming is organized and sited in the eastern part of the province of Noord-Brabant. My intention is to bring about an integration of the landscapes of production and consumption by allowing visitors to the production facilities without frustrating the landscape qualities. The clustering of intensive livestock breeding must be the means to make new landscape spaces instead of being the villain of the piece, swallowing up space in rural areas.

As the city's back garden, the countryside is popular these days among city-dwellers as a residential milieu and a place for recreation. This is in stark contrast to developments in agriculture. Here in Noord-Brabant intensive pig farming is as important as ever for the region's economy. The pig herd is still on the increase but the number of entrepreneurs in pig farming is dwindling dramatically. This scaling-up will continue to mark the sector in the coming years. How rural areas are designed will depend on how the consumption landscape is developed and the production landscape restructured.

The assignment I set myself was to design a single 'agricultural development area' (Dutch initials LOG) in the village of Sint Anthonis for the largest pig herd in Noord-Brabant. The surrounding landscape was recently developed and is being used for recreational ends. The project's key element is the section through two rows of pens with a dividing path down the middle. The earth left from digging the manure cellars is used in a closed soil system to construct grassy slopes which embed the pens as an embankment in the landscape.

My strategy consists of optimizing this basic section and applying qualitatively better materials and new constructions. This makes it financially possible to develop high-grade solutions within the conditions of an industry geared to keeping the cost price down. The basic section informs such aspects as housing the pig farm, dealing with heavy transport, conveying manure to the fermentation unit, supplying the companies with heat and electricity extracted from biogas, discharging purified manure water into the surface water, bringing daylight to the pens and giving views from the landscape of the farming process.

The section is extruded along the edges of the LOG to create a parklike area with enclosed landscape 'rooms' and new views. This perimeter development is breached in several places or existing roads are raised up, options influenced by the landscape on site. Nestling in the council's recreational network, the project area enjoys broad contact with the surroundings. So clustering intensive livestock breeding does open up new spaces in the landscape.

Place of education: AAS Tilburg | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Martien Jansen, Tony Goossens, Jan Willem van Kuilenburg, Sjef van Hoof, Frank Doomen