A year after Crown Prince Willem Alexander accepted the first copy of ‘Sweet&Salt: Water and the Dutch’ and opened the exhibition in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the book – now in its third printing – is receiving prizes and praise.

After Hurricane Sandy, the New York Times wrote an article ‘Going with the flow’ related to my book ‘Sweet&Salt”. It discusses how the Dutch approach to water management can serve as an example for the United States.

When a cow gives more than 100.000 liters of milk during her lifetime, her owner gets a small silver-colored statuette with a plaque with her name on it. Dairy farmer Nol Hooijmaijers and his wife Wil have had three of these prize animals: Mies 30, Henny 144 and Pietje 60. Their statues take pride of place on the countertop in their brand-new kitchen.

The Dutch are the canaries in the global-warming coalmine, writes James Russell in his review of Sweet&Salt: Water and the Dutch in the December print issue of Architectural Record. ‘Sweet&Salt is a profoundly humanistic consideration of the culture of water, with many ideas by designers about how to deal with water’s myriad challenges.’ He describes the book as ”an intensely visual consideration of the history, culture and engineering of water that engages our senses and our emotions – not just our intellect – with its ravishing photography, cartography and art.” He is manifestly relieved that it is possible to talk about water issues and climate change without having to put on a hair shirt. 

Sweeet&Salt: Water and the Dutch is ‘a beautiful and important book’, writes Armando Carbonell of the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy in his review of the book for the Loeb Fellowship site. ‘The ever-increasing Dutch reliance on engineering solutions to keep the water at bay does not come without costs, and they go beyond the never-ending building and maintenance of structures. There are increasing conflicts between the sweet and the salt, with serious worries about  fresh water for drinking and agriculture.’ And now comes the ‘hot breath of climate change’, with a higher sea level, bigger storm surges and more extreme rainfall events. The Dutch response? Not so much the widely touted building with nature, says Carbonell, but rather: engineering with nature. 

Water is life – and death. As floods and droughts assume Biblical proportions in many areas in the world, the magnitude of the water issues we face is penetrating our awareness and our political and spatial agenda. Nowhere is that clearer than in the Netherlands, where mastery of the water has always been a condition for survival. If there is one element which is crucial to the Low Lands – for its sheer existence, for its landscape, for its identity – then that is water. The Dutch created land by pushing the water out with dikes and keeping it out with pumps. Now, however, the country that has refashioned its landscape so distinctly in order to keep water out, is letting it back in. For Landscape, the magazine of the British Landscape Institute, I wrote an essay based on my book in collaboration with Maartje van den Heuvel, Sweet&Salt: Water and the Dutch.

Read the essay here: Tracy Metz – Designin for water: the sweet & the salt of it – 2012 – Landscape Institute

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February 12th, 2012: I present the first copy of the Dutch edition of ‘Zoet&Zout: Water en de Nederlanders’ to crown prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands. The English version, ‘Sweet&Salt: Water and the Dutch’ will appear later this week. The prince also opened the eponymous exhibition in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, curated by Maartje van den Heuvel.

‘Zoet&Zout: Water en de Nederlanders’ vertelt het verhaal van de nieuwe verhouding tussen de Lage Landen en dat element dat zo bepalend is voor onze landschap én identiteit: het water. Na eeuwen van heerschappij over het water, waarin we dachten alles naar onze hand te kunnen zetten, proberen we nu mee te bewegen met de natuur. Het water is niet de vijand, maar een frenemy – willen we althans in deze delta kunnen blijven wonen.

Zoet&Zout is een tweedelig project: het boek, dat de extreme makeover van steden en landschap beschrijft, en de tentoonstelling in de Kunsthal, waarvoor Maartje van den Heuvel 125 kunstwerken bij elkaar brengt die onze relatie tot het water verbeelden.

Het eerste exemplaar van het boek is uitgereikt aan (toen nog) kroonprins Willem-Alexander, die ook de tentoonstelling opende.