When outdoor recreational activities are restricted, where can we find solitude, exploration and self-reliance? Endangered Experiences in Nature is a project that creates disruptive scenarios to question the relationship we have now with landscapes. A forecast in which stargazing is replaced by watching cyborg fireflies in the sky, food is genetically engineered and getting lost can only happen with the aid of special devices.

The thesis uses the tools of experience design and future studies to explore the meanings and values of nature. I analyze the experiential perspective of access to nature and outdoor recreation by focusing on experiences that will likely become inaccessible in the near future. This thesis is not about preservation but stands aspiring for recreating values humans got until now from the close relationship with natural settings. In doing so, I aspire to generate new experiences. My work therefore focuses not on what nature is but what it means to perceive something as being natural, wild, unexplored, in an age where every part of nature has been explored and exploited. My original contribution focuses on using nostalgia as an active method to create new relationships with our environment. Certain things will need to be “artificial” in order to achieve “real” experiences.

The project will focus on three scenarios placed in the near future (2040). Each case study extrapolates on a particular endangered experience in wilderness (solitude, exploration and self-reliance) and is set in 3 distinct landscapes located in The Netherlands, Sweden and Romania. By doing so, I touch upon different cultural and natural influences on my design process. All scenarios encompass artificial (engineered) surrogates that question the inaccessibility to experiences in natural landscapes. With the goal to create counter-experiences in the future and therefore formulate a new way to deal with our relationship with nature conceptually and physically.