07. Parenthèses (Re)naissantes

 

Eglantine Imbot is a Parisian city girl, yet she became aware of the importance of the plant world in our lifestyle and for our well-being at a very young age. She graduated from the École de Paris-Belleville and is an accredited architect. She worked on various types of architecture for sixteen years before deciding to focus her career on design projects centred around the connection between the living and the environment. She has just finished the Conception et Création de Jardin dans le Paysage (CCJP) (Garden Design and Creation in Landscape) course at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles. Eglantine now works on creating projects on a regional scale for parks and public spaces, and believes strengthening the link between the city and biodiversity is crucial. She brings to life her desire to play a role in improving the quality of life in urban environments in the face of climate change by introducing a calming freshness, a certain vitality and visual beauty in all seasons into cities.

 

As a child, Anne Gilot spent her summers in Anjou, where her grandparents taught her how to grow and tend to a vegetable garden in accordance with the seasons and the plants. She studied at the École d’Architecture de la Ville et des Territoires, followed by the École d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville, and then left France soon after graduating, driven by her curiosity and thirst for challenges and exploration. The years she then lived in Congo, Scotland, the Middle East, Canada and South Africa provided her with boundless inspiration. Her return to France was a key turning point: Anne decided to incorporate the living into her spatial design and set her sights on creating gardens. With that goal in mind, she joined the Conception et Création de Jardin dans le Paysage (CCJP) (Garden Design and Creation in Landscape) course at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles. Anne was enthralled by the history of art in gardens and in awe of the powerful influence that the living could have over a space, and so she decided to bring architecture to life thanks to the ebb and flow in the garden, its cyclicality and its changes. Drawing inspiration from the way she feels at peace when faced with vast landscapes and the beauty of nature, Anne searches for a way to portray this emotion in her gardens, while looking to protect the sheer wealth of ecosystems in the plant species she uses for her creations.

 

Caroline Semere was born and bred in Toulouse, yet holds a fascination for far-off lands and the landscapes of the Great North, which she explores whenever the opportunity arises. She began her career with twelve years in the IT sector. After gaining her French BTS (vocational qualification), she worked on developing her organisational and communication skills in project coordination and project management roles. Motivated by a desire to make a more meaningful contribution to protecting the environment through her work, she decided to change career paths in 2021, and joined the Conception et Création de Jardin dans le Paysage (CCJP) (Garden Design and Creation in Landscape) course at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles. On this course, Caroline worked on all sorts of projects of varying size. She gained recognition for her end-of-course project on the renovation of the outdoor spaces at the Versailles Court of Appeal and her proposal was selected to be implemented. Thanks to all this experience, she chose to focus her new career on the public sector. Caroline was passionate about the technical side of design and monitoring project implementation, and so today she puts her comprehensive expertise into a field that really means something to her, that of landscape design.

 

Thanks to his childhood spent exploring the lush green hills of Perche, Emmanuel Joseph has retained and nurtured a taste for local landscapes and authenticity. With over 20 years’ professional experience in the digital sector, he has a flexible, open-minded and forward-thinking take on project management. In 2021, Emmanuel decided to put his career as an engineer on the back burner and turn his attention to living organisms in search of more meaning and a closer, more intimate connection with nature. He therefore went to study at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles. This experience literally transformed him and he was able to meet new people and establish strong links while exploring and building on his creativity. He completed the Conception et Création de Jardin dans le Paysage (CCJP) (Garden Design and Creation in Landscape) course in 2023 and was congratulated for his end-of-course project on vineyard landscapes. Emmanuel now works as a designer on elaborate projects for both private individuals and institutions.

 

Matthieu Bureau was inspired at a very young age by the colours and textures in a garden from his childhood, and began designing his own clothes, developing an eclectic interest in all forms of art. After studying literature, art and fashion design, he adopted a certain traditional Parisian style in his work, which earned him recognition at the International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Fashion Accessories in Hyères. He has created his own fashion line, become a stylist and artistic director for various luxury fashion brands in France, Italy and Japan. Over time, he specialised in haute couture and stage costumes, and managed complex joint ventures that were focused on personalised creation. Mathieu decided to focus his work on the living over the long-term and so embarked on a new career path at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, making the garden the new focus of his professional creations. From then on, his work focused on the space beyond the body, to encourage movement and well-being. He completed his studies in Conception et Création de Jardin dans le Paysage (CCJP) (Garden Design and Creation in Landscape) in 2023 and then decided to make use of his ability to listen to a request and to come up with a creation as close as possible to the requirements of his clients and end users in terms of appearance and art-de-vivre. His aim is to create a fresh take on bespoke gardens, to regenerate the originality of a place in keeping with its landscape and the architecture it contains and to showcase the splendour of its natural surroundings in a joyful, dynamic manner.