Parc des Iles

Location: Drocourt Rouvroy, Henin-Beaumont, France
Project management: Community of Agglomeration Henin-Carvin
Landscape Architecture: Ilex landscape architecture
Contest: June 2005
Status: Work in progress
Area: 160 ha
The first operational phase: 45ha

This entry was written by admin, posted on July 1, 2010 at 2:32 pm, filed under Parks, Post-Industrial and tagged France. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Water Mirror

Landscape Architecture: Michel Corajoud
Location: Bordeaux, France
Finished: 2009

Miroir d’eau in France

Bordeaux : paquebot en escale in France

This entry was written by admin, posted on May 7, 2010 at 10:53 pm, filed under Playscapes, Squares, Waterfronts and tagged Bordeaux, France. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Place de la République

Design: Josep Lluís Mateo
Restricted competition: 

2009
Site: Paris
Area: 34.000 m2

External collaborators:
Lighting concept: Artec
Landscaping: d’Ici-là
Structure / Installations: EGI (Enginyeria i Gestió d’Infrastructures)

Josep Lluís Mateo:

“Place de la République as public space

Transforming a traffic junction into an urban space means, firstly, reducing the impact of road traffic. According to studies carried out by our traffic engineers, based on available data, it is possible to reduce 7-8 lanes to 4-5. It is also possible to avoid vehicular traffic around the monument.

Having addressed the traffic, the challenge is to transform the place into an urban space.

1. Pavements and plaza
We propose a substantial increase in pavement space, concentrating all specifically urban flows (buses and taxis) around its edge. The pavement, transformed into a boulevard, would then be able to accommodate both pedestrian traffic and the kiosks and galleries that house the overflow of ground-floor businesses, as well as being a place for people to sit and rest.
The central plaza, also enlarged, would be of a different nature: a space for demonstration and representation that can coexist with the more domestic, ludic presence of nature. Monument esplanade, garden.

2. The plaza: unity and diversity
The plaza, a long space running NW-SE, takes in three different urban moments. These characteristics call for specific attention to create a figure that is designed to be unitary but also special, contextual and varied.

2 The small salon
At its north-west point (rue Boulanger, bvd St Martin, …), the plaza meets the pre-Haussmann city, with its finer grain and less geometrical monumentality. Our response is the small salon; earth makes an appearance at ground level, with emphasis on the urban continuity of bvd St Martin-rue Boulanger. The idea of the paving is to establish continuities between the city and the plaza. Traffic, though a real presence, could be studied and eliminated at certain points to ensure pedestrian continuity.

2B The centre of the monument
The centre of the place, at present a small island amid the flow of traffic, is marked by movement. We propose constructing a base for it, a podium which, with a slight slope, accentuates the volcanic composition of the object and allows people to walk around it, establish a direct relation with it and rest in its shelter.

2C The esplanade
The most abstract boundary would be on the three-pronged Haussmann layout: bvd Voltaire, République, bvd du Temple. This is the site of the big demonstrations that characterize the place. We propose the construction of a great petrous esplanade, with a 2.5% gradient, at the far edge of which people would be naturally higher (2 m) than the traffic, which would pass under foot without being seen. A break in section near the end would allow the introduction, in the English landscape tradition, of a ha-ha, an invisible railing, offering views from the esplanade of the spectacle of the vanishing points of the boulevards, with the great petrous base as the only foreground.

The great esplanade constitutes the dialectical counterpoint with the small salon, at the same time ensuring continuity with the symbolism of the monument.”

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 4, 2010 at 1:38 am, filed under Parks, Squares and tagged France, Paris. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Foundries’ Garden

Project: Jardin des Fonderies / Foundries’ Garden
Design:  ADH Doazan+Hirschberger
Location: Nantes, France
Area: 23 000 m²
Budget: 5 M €
Studies : april 04 / november 06
Works : may 07 / april 09
Text & Photos: ADH & Hervé Abbadie

The Foundries’ Garden is located on the « Ile de Nantes », one of the biggest urban projects under construction in France. The development is spread out in the length of an island in the centre of Nantes.

Directed by Alexandre Chemetoff since 1990, the project is the transformation of a long unused factory and warehouse district into a large working and housing neighborhood of 350 hectares. Chemetoff’s vision for the project rests on two underlying ideas:
-make the most of the existing structures without demolishing,
-take into account the history and geography of the site, and its social environment.

The Foundries’ Garden project is located in the middle of the island, far from the river Loire, in a suburban zone with social housing and factories.

The project consists in the rehabilitation of the building and public spaces around the Fonderies Atlantique complex. Fonderies Atlantique was a company specialized in manufacturing propellers for sea liners. Many famous liners were equipped with these propellers (Le France, Le Clémenceau) before the company changed its name and location. Industrial ovens, rails and three pits are visible traces of the old activity that remain on the site.

The main goals were:
-Create a “garden under a roof”: a covered public space for everyday use, children’s games and neighborhood social events (dinners, exhibitions…). Having the garden sheltered is a big advantage for all these public uses;

-Showcase the former industrial activity, not just as a museum but also as a legacy of a place where many local citizens were employed, worked hard and with passion and for which the conservation of the site is a emotional tribute to the city’s industrial past and to their working lives.

The garden is split into two parts:

-“Le jardin des fours” located around the former ovens. Here, we planted graminaceae, bamboos and arundos that will create “green columns” next to new water tanks.  The garden will become a kind of “machines gallery”.

-A “Travels Garden” occupies the main part of the site. It’s built 1,50m above the original ground level because of the polluted soil that needed to be stabilized. The travel theme is illustrated with a collection of plants that came into Europe through the Atlantic ports during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. These essences were imported thanks to overseas scientific and economic expeditions and became acclimatized.

The former iron structure was repaired and painted. The roof was replaced with a mix of full and transparent polycarbonate tiles.

The site covering (roof and buildings around) protects it from the wind and allows the temperature in the garden to be 3 or 4 degrees Celsius higher than outside. This “greenhouse’s effect” allowed us to plant almost exotic vegetation.

A covered garden needs a complete watering system: rain water is collected by 2 tanks (2×50m3) and redistributed through different watering networks. Humidity and freshness is maintained by mist spraying the plants.

This entry was written by admin, posted on September 27, 2009 at 9:38 pm, filed under Infrastructure, Parks, Post-Industrial and tagged France, Nantes. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Vertical garden /France

Designer: Patrick Blanc

Quai Branly Museum / Paris

This entry was written by admin, posted on July 2, 2009 at 12:54 am, filed under Green roofs & walls and tagged France, Vertical garden. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.