Knowledge about river functions and river restoration is increasing, and yet few flood management project studies take properly ecology into account from early design stages. Indeed, design studies and environmental impact studies are traditionally carried out successively, as distinct stages. Our purpose is therefore to help people with different backgrounds and objectives, who are not used to working together, to define a common objective and to improve collectively the design. We propose a typology based on riverscapes, summarizing for all possible types -natural and artificial- the information relevant for a fruit-ful dialog for design proposals. The riverscapes hierarchy is used to define the best attainable riverscape for each stretch with respect to the civil engineering constraints. Riverscapes types are then a basis on which further improvements can be discussed. We present here the approach on existing dry dams of Polish Silesia, where the riverscape could be easily ranked according to the percentage of river artificialisation and with only one hydraulic structure is involved. Subsequent developments are being made to enlarge the approach to broader schemes with more possible riverscape types.