Prés du Goualoup
38. Le jardin émotionnel
Garden by Arnaud Maurières and Éric Ossart
published at 13/02/2024
A garden is naturally an emotional place. In 2022, Arnaud Maurières and Éric Ossart published their Emotional Garden Manifesto as a response to, or more specifically a natural extension of, Mathias Goeritz’s Emotional Architecture Manifesto. Le jardin émotionnel (The emotional garden) created in the Prés du Goualoup park is a real-life illustration of this publication. In this place that Éric Ossart created with Jean-Paul Pigeat thirty or so years ago, the garden is presented as a return to roots and is a simple illustration of Ferdinand Bac’s mythological Mediterranean and Luis Barragan’s Mexican Modernism, while reflecting the background of the two landscape architects at the same time.
Two isolated trees are the central features of the garden. Around one of them are rough stone walls forming a patio, while the other is portrayed as a plant-based sculpture and is set in front of a high, ochre-yellow wall. The colour was chosen as a tribute to Mathias Goeritz and the high wall of the El Eco patio, a random construction that Goeritz created for his own Manifesto, which was painted in this colour for the inauguration of the building in September 1953.
As visitors move through the garden, their gaze is guided towards the structural features such as the tree in front of the ochre wall and the earthenware pot on a base, with opportunities to stop on a bench or admire a view through gaps in the walls. This feature is a nod to the Les Colombières estate where Ferdinand Bac positioned a series of these pots on bases which seemed iconoclastic at the time. For several centuries, only the Medici vase, an antique-inspired stone sculpture, was a worthy decoration in the gardens of wealthy Italian or French estates. It was unthinkable to use a vulgar Provençal oil jar that was made locally with a practical purpose in mind and therefore had no value! The centrepiece of the Jardin émotionnel will be an authentic pot from the Les Colombières estate, donated by the garden’s owner, Michael Likierman.
DESIGNERS
Arnaud MAURIERES and Éric OSSART, landscape architects
FRANCE
Landscape architects Arnaud Maurières and Éric Ossart played a key role at the very beginning of the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire, and they are now back with a permanent garden creation in the Prés du Goualoup park. One of their most significant projects was the restoration of the Les Colombières garden in Menton. The garden was created by Ferdinand Bac between 1917 and 1925 and has been listed as a Historic Monument since 1991. This classification serves as recognition of the influence this garden has had on many landscapers and architects of the modern era. The most famous of them is probably Mexican architect Luis Barragan, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1980. The discovery of Ferdinand Bac’s work in 1925, then Les Colombières and meeting the creator in 1933 greatly influenced the work of the young Mexican and paved the way for his future career.
When Arnaud Maurières and Éric Ossart restored the garden at Les Colombières between 1995 and 2000, they drew on inspiration from both Bac’s archives and Barragan’s work to continue building on a creation that had been started 70 years earlier. They travelled to Mexico for the first time in 2008 to see for themselves the houses and gardens designed by Luis Barragan, and they were so bowled over by this beautiful country that they moved there three years later. Perhaps by chance, they built their garden on the shores of Lake Chapala, just a few kilometres away from the Barragan family ranch.
The owners of the Casa Galvez in Mexico, one of the architect’s most iconic creations, have now called upon the services of Arnaud Maurières and Éric Ossart for their garden, and in 2025, the Ferdinand Bac garden and Barragan’s Casa Galvez will be twinned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Les Colombières.
When they discovered that the Mexican creations they admired had served as inspiration for a French garden they were responsible for restoring, they were very surprised and even moved. They harnessed this emotion to design a space inspired by Mexican Modernism for the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire.
