Intersecting Landscapes: New Spatial Visions for the Cross-Border Region of the Prespa Lakes

The paper presents a research-by-design contribution focused on the Prespa–Ohrid lake system, with particular attention to Pustec Municipality (Albania), integrating method, diagnosis, and design hypothesis into a single narrative. Methodologically, it proposes a “sensitive” exploration that treats walking as a knowledge device and constructs trans-scalar readings of territory as a living system. The diagnostic section reframes the area as a planetary-scale “witness territory” and identifies strategic interpretive nuclei that can reorient action beyond infrastructural templates and growth-driven agendas towards ecosystem-based logics and cross-border cooperation. The design hypothesis translates this stance across two levels: a cross-border strategy articulated through national sequences and phased objectives; and a local prototype in Pustec (the agro-field as a connector of landscapes and biotopes) combining knowledge infrastructures, buffer landscapes, water management, and productive systems within a shared civic-ecological framework. The overall horizon is vision-making understood as an adaptive, care-oriented process rather than a blueprint.