Last week, we introduced Atelier Altern and their landscapping vision for the historic French town of Toulouse. Today, we bring you their second chosen work for Amiens which is for the islands of the Hortillonnages. The project, ‘On vous raconte des salades’, which translates to mean ‘to spin a yard’ is about the installation telling a story of forgotten varieties of salad.
More about the proposal after the break.
“We wanted to take up two small and abandoned islands of the Salad Harbour, and to make them a medium of developpement and communication for old and forgotten varieties of salad,” explained Aurélien Zoia & Sylvain Morin.
Visitors travel on a small boat to reach the island and upon reaching the shoreline, they come in contact with a structure containing canted framings, and covered by a protective net for the salad crops.
“Not far from here, we have contemplated producing thousands of different salads and, between the first and the fourth of July, distributing them for free, because these varieties are forbidden to be sold by the farmers in France,” explained the landscappers.
The landscappers approach this site by studying old varieties of plants that had been rejected, and moving to now incorporate them back into the gardens.
Title: “On vous raconte des salades”
Landscape architects: Atelier Altern, Aurélien Zoia & Sylvain Morin
Location: Amiens, Floating Gardens (Hortillonnages) for La Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, France
Project Area: 200 m2, on two islands
Project Year: 2010
Images : Atelier Altern
