WINNER

Recode the road

Project Description by Team: The L202 is more than a mere road; it is a piece of software executing obsolete instructions. Designed for speed and flow, it slices through landscapes that need healing, slowing down, and growing back: we propose to recode this infrastructural code and turn the L202 into a living corridor that fosters connections between ecology, mobility, and community. It is a territorial reprogramming: an open-source protocol to restore soil, regenerate ecological continuity, and re-activate public space through light, replicable, and scalable actions.

Jury Statement: "Instead of proposing a linear sequence of interventions along the L202, the project introduces a broad, geographically informed reading of the entire region. By working with the analytical layers “solid,” “fluid,” and “biotic,” it succeeds in interpreting the territory across the dividing road as a coherent network of ecosystems connected through soil conditions, watercourses, and habitat structures. The project’s central document – the new regional map – does not depict the status quo, but rather a condition in which these connections are uncovered, strengthened, and newly interpreted. 

Building on this foundation, the project formulates a vision that transforms the road space into a diverse habitat where different modes of mobility coexist, but which is primarily conceived as a rich threshold space that no longer divides but connects. In doing so, the proposal offers an entirely new perspective: rather than starting from the deficit of the road corridor and suggesting improvements, it reveals the latent potentials that lie behind and beneath it. 

The proposed interventions along the L202 are conceived as part of a large-scale process of repair: the exemplary “nodes” are not traffic junctions, but points where the road space interweaves with crossing strands of landscape, biotopes, and waterways. The road edges are activated to create a new functional and ecological framework for the mobility corridor, one that is woven into its surroundings. Along the traffic band—whose functional necessity is accepted—permeable yet usable surfaces are introduced to support soft mobility and create areas for staying and lingering. Soil reconstruction, the re-exposure of water lines, and a water-absorbing topography of swales and dunes establish the basis for ecological corridors that accompany the road and link it to the wider landscape. The nature of these interventions varies along the kilometres and responds to local conditions. In this way, the project successfully connects a territorial reinterpretation with precise measures at the local scale. 

“Recode the Road” convinces with a highly appropriate and contemporary approach to an enormous challenge, reframing the task of the L202 and providing a foundation for planning as a multidisciplinary and social process of negotiation. It offers stakeholders a vision that begins with the road corridor yet extends far beyond it, imagining the entire region as a multi-layered, transhuman, and climate-resilient habitat."