Receding coastline and landscape transformation on the Grand-Site de France Les-Deux-Caps, Pas-de-Calais: Impact on the preservation of military heritage, immersive discovery and the natural environment of the Pointe de la Crèche

Immediately to the south of the Grand-Site de France Les Deux-Caps – property of the Coastal Conservancy – Pointe de la Crèche is a strategic ecological landscape zone offering exceptional panoramic views, shaped by a delicate balance between natural spaces and the urban influence of Wimereux and Boulogne-sur-Mer. This windswept site suffers from constant erosion, resulting in a confrontation between safety challenges for visitors and the promotion and preservation of the military vestiges that clutch onto the rocky outcrop. The landscaping project pays heed to the site’s nature and history, over an approach to promote existing features, with their own specificities, whilst ensuring visitor circulation and site appreciation (paths and viewpoints, means of crossing and belvederes). It is a project that relies on what is ‘already there’ and has always remained and evolved since the end of the Second World War.

Élise and Martin Hennebique are landscape designers and winners of the AJAP 2018 (Album des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes), State landscape advisers and specialists on historic gardens, heritage and landscape. They essentially work on heritage sites: historic monuments, archaeological sites, parks and gardens, together with natural protected areas. Élise and Martin are committed and hope to contribute towards ecological transition via the projects they manage at different levels. Indeed, well beyond historic and aesthetic preoccupations, they approach each landscaping project like a sensitive and transversal solution to a problem, with the present and future needs and usages they encounter on each site (local landscaping identity, ecosystem preservation, countering the effects of climate change, soil renaturation and economising natural resources). Since 2019, Élise and Martin have been providing project management assistance to the Pas-de-Calais Department Council, in partnership with the Coastal Coastal Conservancy.

Free entry, subject to capacity.