2013 edition - Gardens of sensations

20. La rivière des sens

published at 18/10/2017

"La rivière des sens", Festival des Jardins 2013 - © E. Sander

Huddled together in a green river, these wooden frames draw us in and guide us on an initiatory journey in discovery of the garden. They create atmospheres, dabbled light, waymark the journey, define the views, direct the line of sight and transform the landscape at each twist and turn. In its centre the garden invades the structure, turns it on its head and disorientates us. The sky becomes the ground and we lose our bearings in this topsy-turvy environment. The frames are now upside-down, carried by the climbers attached to their posts. Like a stream coiled up in its meanders, the “architectural river” appears, sometimes majestic, sometimes drowned in the thickness of foliage and beckons us along it. On one of its banks, a swathe of herbs pricks up our nostrils. On the other bank, a meadow filled with nectar-producing plants reveals itself in glimpses. The countless plants, with subtly matching shapes, textures and colours, frolic with the wind and the light, carry scents and produce sounds, allowing visitors in this way to see them, smell them and touch them until being completely submerged. Sweeping stretches of perennials and grasses sway to and fro with the remodelled soil – recreating the eternal magic of the waves.

It is only when the river finally releases us from its swirls and eddies, washing us up on the beach, that we realise it was all just a dream.

Designers

ATELIER VECTEUR -Coline GIARDI, Thomas DALBY and Cléo DESCHAINTRES, architects, Ugo ELZIERE, collaborator, Nicolas SUISSA, computer graphics designer-, Léonard CATTONI, landscape designer-urban planner and Margot CHABERT, , landscape engineer

FRANCE

From left to right: Ugo Elziere, Nicolas Suissa, Cléo Deschaintres, Thomas Dalby, Coline Giardi, Margot Chabert and Leonard Cattoni

Atelier Vecteur is a young collective, set up in 2010 around Cléo Deschaintes, Coline Giardi, Nicolas Suissa, Thomas Dalby and Ugo Elziere. Architects, graphic artists and designers, they all spent time at Montpelier’s National Higher School of Architecture. Graduates of the School of Architecture, the School of Arts and Crafts and the School of Film and Special Effects, and benefiting from a wide variety of professional experiences across the world – in Ireland, Australia, China and Germany – the Atelier’s members owe their dynamism to a confrontation of multidisciplinary skills. Through the interaction of different creative fields, “Atelier Vecteur” seeks to be a laboratory of ideas and a tool for their expression.

Margot Chabert is a landscape engineer who graduated from the National School of Higher Studies in Nature and Landscape Architecture (ENSNP) in Blois in 2011, since when she has been working with “D'ici là paysagistes” a recently formed Paris agency that won the 2012 Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes.

Léonard Cattoni is a landscape engineer and town-planner. After obtaining a Higher Technical Certificate in Landscape Architecture at the Ecole Du Breuil (Vincennes), he enrolled at the National School of Higher Studies in Nature and Landscape Architecture (ENSNP) in Blois, from which he graduated in 2011. He continued his studies for a further year, taking a town-planning course at Marne-la-Vallée School of Architecture, since when he has been working with the “Obras” architecture and town-planning agency in Paris.

Designers

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