The work of two young French landscape designers, Sylvain Morin and Aurélien Zoia, has been selected for Imaginez Maintenant, a summer national event where young landscapers experiment and share their ideas. The designers have been chosen to work on two French heritage sites, one in Toulouse and the other in Amiens. Today, we share their design for Toulouse, and next week, we’ll share their strategy for Amiens.

More images and more about the landscape after the break.



The landscape developed for Toulouse is “kinetic” in the sense that it is based on existing conditions, but it will also satisfy the site’s new identity when it becomes the Center of Art and Choreography.



The site contains a famous domed chapel and Morin and Zoia played to its architectural heritage by wanting the landscape to “act with poetry and simplicity.” The solution includes a simple field of wood sticks that covers the yard. ”By an undulation impression, the wood sticks look like a condensed and repetitive pattern. An imaginary effect of overflowing in a space …”



The landscapers approached the design with the philosophy that their work is “an act between art and landscape based in an elementary approach : to be affected by the sight of the ordinary in telling the extraordinary.”

Title: Débordement (“overflowing”)

Landscape architects: Atelier Altern, Aurélien Zoia & Sylvain Morin

Location: Toulouse, France

Project Area: 700 m2

Project Year: 2010

Images : Atelier Altern