Rosa Barba Finalist 1
With C. Courtecuisse
Gilles Clément is a Horticultural engineer, landscape architect, author, gardener, and teacher at the « Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage » in Versailles (ENSP). In additional to his activity as a creator of parks, gardens , public and private areas, he pursues his theoretical and practical investigations in three directions : The Garden in Motion, a concept derived from experiments in his own garden in the Creuse, and applied to public areas in France and abroad beginning in 1983. The initial description of this work was published in 1991 with four successive reprints by Sens and Tonka in Paris. The idea was put into practice for the first time in a public space in 1986 at the André Citroën Park in Paris, inaugurated in 1999. Numerous projects based on this principle of management have since been carried out, in particular at the “Lycée Agriculturel Jules Rieffel” in Saint Herblain (Loire Atlantique) between 2004 and 2009. The Planetary Garden, a political project, based on ecological humanism, first brought to public attention by a novel/essay Thomas et le Voyageur, published by Albin Michel in 1996, and by a major exhibit in the “Grande Halle de la Villette” in Paris (1999/2000) as well as by a certain number of studies: -the Planetary Garden of Shanghai -the Landscape Charter of Vassivière (Limousin) and other work in progress. The Third -Landscape -a concept developed in the course of a landscape appraisal in the Limousin, defined as a « hesitant fragment of the Planetary Garden », applied to all neglected (friche) or left behind spaces (délaissés) which he considers as the principal breeding area for biological diversity.