07. Fenêtre sur cour
Inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock film, the garden becomes a film scene. There is no one in this space; it observes itself, as if it were an old film whose images slowly start coming to life. At the garden’s entrance, a few pops of blue mark the transition between the real, coloured world and the black-and-white world of fiction.
The brick walls are reminiscent of the urban façades in thrillers, recreating the film sets of 1950s New York. The visitor becomes the audience, behind the windows that serve as the reel and projector.
A black-and-white courtyard appears inside this ring, like a captured sequence. At its centre, a white table implies the presence of an invisible person. Around it, dark plants add a sense of depth and mystery, while white foliage emits a subtle light.
Off screen, nothing is fixed, the wind, shadows and light constantly rewriting the script. In this silent film, nature plays the lead role. This ‘rear garden’ prompts us to question our connection to the living world: are we actors, directors or simply the viewers of our gardens?
DESIGNERS
Azilis Dubée is a graduate of the Institut Agro – Angers campus, an engineering school specialising in horticulture and landscaping. As a student, she specialised in landscape, operationality and projects, focusing on design and implementation of landscape projects. It was there that she met Adrien Laurelli, with whom she shares a common vision of landscape design, combining conceptual thinking with care over implementation. Her career was also marked by an Erasmus at a school of architecture in Madrid, an experience that enriched her thinking on the relationship between architecture and landscape. She did all her schooling in the Breton language and grew up in the countryside near Guingamp, a context that gave her an early taste for plants and a sensitive approach to the landscape, attentive to uses, perceptions and living environments.