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La renaissance du parc et des jardins d’Ancy-le-Franc by Laure QUONIAM – Château de Bénouville
The rebirth of the Ancy-le-Franc park and gardens
Since 2014, following a historic study conducted since 2012 and a general development plan approved by the Burgundy region’s Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs, the landscape architect Laure Quoniam has been continuing her quest for artistic harmony between the Time of History and the space of the Present, via this large-scale venture. The entire story since 1576 of the study and the project to recreate the Ancy-le-Franc gardens will be the subject of this abundantly documented and illustrated conference. This quite unique work on such an important private monument was recently nominated for the Victoires du Paysage 2018 competition, the prize-winning ceremony of which will be held in December 2018.
Laure Quoniam
After graduating as an architect in Paris, Laure Quoniam headed for Harvard University in 1984 to study landscaping. After graduating, she joined the American landscaper Dan Kiley’s agency, located in the Mountains of Vermont. When she returned to France in 1991, she was commissioned by the French Ministry for Culture within the context of the programme act which provided grants to help private individuals restore their historic gardens. In 1989, she was called upon to rehabilitate the Pont du Gard site. The scale of her mission required that she compose a team. Hence began her own agency, where she was to conduct 300 private and public studies and landscape developments in France and abroad. Convinced that each place has its own singular capacity to touch the heart or the memory of men, her creative solutions called upon all forms of culture. And in collaboration with artists, her landscaping projects became allegories: ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ at the International Garden Festival in Chaumont-sur-Loire (1992), the interior garden of the RATP headquarters (1995), an interpretation of the organisation’s logo, a metaphor of the plan of the Paris metro network, the ‘Jackson Pollock patio’ (2011), Seine Saint-Denis, etc. For Ancy-le-Franc, she exposed the historic and artistic reflection that inspired her flower bed, the future garden of Pharsale, an interpretation of the park’s longevity faced with global warming.