Long bound to our bodily shell, our exacerbated senses are now looking outwards – and even internationally. From a local animal we have become a global animal. Constantly bombarded by stimuli, our different senses are collapsing under the sheer weight of information. Whether this harks from right where we are or from the other side of the world, we receive it with the same intensity. The digital age, multiple media and interfaces allow us to see the world through chosen prisms where each vision placed one alongside the other deludes us and confuses our senses so much that we believe the whole stems from the tiny. Capable of believing that he has full control over the subject of the world, Man loses his way as the image recreated is but the reflection of a fragmented vision of reality.
The garden stages visitors through a landscaped metaphor where the mirrors distill the diversity of the viewpoint(s), like snippets of data here and there that trouble our vision. We will have to wait until we get right to the end of the jetty at the garden’s heart for our senses to finally come together, united in a single point/place. La jetée (The jetty) gives rise to a pacified horizon in which the scattering of our senses is now just a distant memory – for, alone on the jetty, we are now at one with nature. There is an internal landscape in each and every one of us, capable of producing this acutely peculiar sensation.
Designers
César GOURDON and Amélie BUSIN, architects
FRANCE
Amélie Busin and César Gourdon are both architects, respectively trained at the Saint Luc Higher Institute of Architecture in Tournai (Belgium) and the Special School of Architecture in Paris (France). The two young architects had the opportunity to confront their different visions of the world while working for innovative agencies early on in their careers. They went on to set up a multidisciplinary group including architects, graphic artists and photographers (among others!), calling into question the various relationships between Nature, Body and Space. Each project they undertake seeks to create a plural and collaborative architecture that respects the human, social and landscape environment into which it is incorporated – a matter of fundamental importance to the young duo.
