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La force de l’histoire by Gilles CLEMENT – Château de Bénouville
The power of history
Gilles Clément
In the early 1970s, Gilles Clément began to design and create gardens for private clients in France and abroad. In 1977, he took a break from this activity to devote his time to “public areas”, founding the Atelier Acanthe in 1985. He set up his own business as an artist in 2000 and organised his production via sub-contracting contracts with landscaping workshops, Coloco in Paris in particular.
The concept of the “Jardin en Mouvement” (moving garden), born from an experiment in his own garden in the Creuse area, was applied to a public area for the first time in 1986 at the Parc André Citroën. The eponymous publication was completed in 1991. Several others followed (more than twenty), some of them conveying other important concepts: the “Jardin Planétaire” (planetary garden) exhibition in La Villette in 1999/2000, the “Tiers-Paysage” (third landscape) in 2003, translated into several languages.
His work has been rewarded with a number of prizes including the “Grand prix du paysage” in 1998.
The Parc André Citroën (co-design), the Domaine du Rayol in Var, the Jardins de l’Arche in Nanterre, the Jardin de Valloires in Somme, the Parc Matisse in Lille, the Quai Branly museum gardens in Paris, the roof of the submarine base in Saint Nazaire (Jardin du Tiers-Paysage) are among his most widely-known projects.
He acted as lecturer at the ENSP – National School of Landscape Architecture in Versailles from 1980 to 2012, gave lectures at the Collège de France within the context of the artistic creation chair and continued as a temporary lecturer during workshops in Italy, Spain and France.
Further reading :
Belvédère : points de vue sur le paysage, Tarabuste, 2013
Une brève histoire du jardin, Jean-Claude Béhar Editions, 2011
Dans la vallée : biodiversité, art et paysage, Bayard, 2007
Neuf jardins : approche du jardin planétaire, Actes Sud, 2008
Le jardin en mouvement : de la vallée au champ via le parc André-Citroën et le jardin planétaire, Sens & Tonka, 2007