The “Chromatic Garden” in the Park de Gerland ,
in Lyon (FR)
Adriana Ghersi
Department Architecture and Design DAD (University of the Study of Genoa ) mail: aghersi@arch.unige.it
Abstract
The Park de Garland in Lyon is the rehabilitation of a former industrial site, turned into an innovative urban space (80 ha), open to different interpretation of nature, along a gradient from the built environment towards the river Rhône. The Atelier Corajoud realized the park (after winning a competition) from 1999 to 2006.
The most interesting element of the design is the “Megaphorb” Garden, a sequence of cultivated stripe-shaped lots (referring to agriculture as a mediation from town to nature), located along the main axis of the park, characterized by a community of tall herbs and flowering plants, with a wide bio-diversity and variety of colourful vegetation.
The composition of this garden is based on the choice of plants (400 different species) that like a damp, nutrient-rich soil, associated for their particular height, pigmentation, form and texture of the flowers and leaves.
At night, the lighting (by Laurent Fachard) changes the perception of the garden, creating a magic atmosphere: the park becomes a place where people can walk at night, plunging into a symphony of coloured lights. The “Megaphorb Garden” is transformed into a “chromatic garden”, the main luminous event of the park, in which nature is shown under a new aspect and a new perspective. Coloured lights underline any activities and exceptional events, revealing the landscape characters and emphasizing shades, vivacity and morphologies of the vegetation.
Il Parco Gerland a Lione costituisce la trasformazione di un sito industriale dismesso in un parco urbano (80 ettari) aperto a diverse interpretazioni di natura, lungo un gradiente che va dalla città costruita al fiume Rodano. L’Atelier Corajoud ha realizzato il parco (dopo aver vinto un concorso) tra il 1999 e il 2006.
L’elemento più interessante del progetto è il “Giardino delle Megaforbie”, una sequenza di lotto coltivati di forma allungata (che si riferiscono all’agricoltura come mediazione tra ambiente costruito e natura del fiume), posti lungo l’asse prnicipale del parco, caratterizzati da una comunità di alte erbe e piante fiorite, con una grande diversità e varietà di vegetazione colorata.
La composizione del giardino è basata sulla scelta di piante che amano suoli umidi e ricchi di nutrienti, associate per le loro peculiari altezze, colori, forme e tessiture dei fiori e delle foglie. Di notte, l’illuminazione (progettata da Laurent Fachard) cambia la percezione del giardino, creando una magica atmosfera: il parco diventa un luogo per una passeggiata notturna, in una sinfonia di luci colorate. Il “Giardino delle Megaforbie” è trasformato in un “giardino cromatico”, il principale evento luminoso del parco, in cui la natura è mostrata sotto nuova prospettiva. La luce colorata sottolinea le diverse attività e gli eventi, rivelando i caratteri del paesaggio e enfatizzando tonalità, vivacità e morfologie della vegetazione.
The design approach
Michel Corajoud1 is one of the most meaningful protagonist of the French School of Landscape Architecture. As professor in Versailles, he interprets the transformation of the Landscape High School (ENSP), teaching the students his sensitive and dynamic approach, inviting them to listening and curiosity (“to be in an effervescent mood, to
explore boundaries and exceed them, to browse everywhere, to go through the scales, to look ahead”2, to question a site’s potential and identity). In his projects he solves the contemporary social needs, revitalizing a relationship between nature and built environment, using earth movements and vegetation to realize urban parks which represent real cultural references, in which the composition and richness of experiential spaces offer new areas of quality for the neighborhoods of urban suburbs. His realizations are a fundamental 1980s manifesto of the disciplinarian autonomy of Landscape Architecture. The main tool to design is the use of vegetation as a priority material. After dealing with the issue of urban infrastructures, his work for the riverfronts in Lyon and Bordeaux points out the possibility to re-draw the urban margin towards the water through the mediation of a true "cultivated garden", inspired by the rural landscape.
Fig.1 The striped garden along the river Garonne in Bordeaux, near the “water mirror” in front of the historic Place de la Bourse, realised by M. Corajoud in 2006.
1Michel Corajoud (1937-2014) received many prizes,among them: Grand prix du paysage (1992); Médaille de l'Académie
d'architecture (2000); Gran prix for Urban Planning (2003 e 2011), Prix André Le Notre (2013). His office, together with Claire Corajoud, realized many important designs.
The Park de Gerland in Lyon (FR)
Inaugurated in 2000 (Phase 1), located along the river Rhone, on the brownfiled of an ex-industrial district (partially already reconverted into sports area), it is a leisure urban park, designed with a special attention to offer the possibility to discover nature inside the town. The Park de Gerland is connected to the Park of the Golden Head (a wide traditional park of the XIX century3) by the Berges of the Rhone (a walkable promenade of six kilometers, realized by
In-Situ in 2005-20084), thus creating a continuity of high quality urban green spaces, on the
riverbank.
The main part of the Park is a large triangular free lawn (10 ha), with the longest site facing the Rhone, enriched by trees, especially along the riverfront, creating a shady border.
It is an appreciated lively associative place to run, to play, to make a pic-nic, to simply stay with the family, to reconcile the city with the river.
This main lawn is delimited by the special sequence of parallel walkways, crossing th park from north to south, (the “Iris Lane” and the “Flower Lane”) and shallow channels, with aquatic plants, embracing a band of cultivated garden planted in rows, with tall herbs and plants: the “Megaphorb Garden”.
This sequence characterizes the park, creating a relationship from the open and more natural space of the lawn (facing the river) and the urban contest, tied with a system of tree-lined avenues, using a citation of the cultivated agricultural landscape.
A residual industrial pavilion has become the House of Flowers, where the visitors can find a narration of the history of the site, information, gardening classes and temporary exhibitions.
Fig,. 2 Park de Gerland in Lyon: the “Megaphorb Garden”.
3 Inaugurated in 1857, this urban park is inspired to the English Gardens. With a surface of 105 hectares, it is the main park in Lyon, with a 17 ha wide lake, deriving water from the river Rhone.
4 Emmanuel Jalbert and Annie Tardivon designed a fluid linear public promenade (5 Km), passing through a sequence of different spaces, along the river Rhone.
In the park there some particular attractive elements, such as a wide “Fog System”, that creates a fine mist, sport fields, indoor and outdoor skate-parks and different playgrounds, a secondary free lawn, a dense wooden area and a series of allotments and Community gardens.
Other interesting elements deal with animals, such as some insect hotels, filled with different materials, to help the preservation of urban bees5, or many nesting boxes placed in the orchard,
hosting numerous species of birds, to ease a contact with nature.
Fig. 3 The cucle-pedestrian “Flowers Lane” at the border of the larger lawn, that reaches a lower level, finding a wooden deck and a low wall of ramned earth as mediation (on the left) and that marks the beginning of the “Megaphorb Garden” (on the right).
Fig. 4 The pedestrian “Iris Lane”, ending the sequence of the “Megaphorb Garden”, with a double row of trees and a channel with aquatic plants.
5 Urban Bees (www.urbanbees.eu) is a programme with European funding for the preservation of wild bees in urban environments.
The “Megaphorb Garden”
At the border of the main prairie, the cultivated garden is the heart of the project: a promenade that is full of dense vegetation, along an axe that let people interact with a rich, complex and changing vegetal universe. From the botanic concepf of “Megaphorbs” (hydrophilous tall herb fringe communities of plains: a group of luxuriant erbaceous plants, needing a deep fine soil), the realization is a disposition of stripes, for a total length of 600 metres and a total wideness of 50 metres, showing the relationship with tha cultivated landscape, talking about the rural tradition. This Megaphorb garden show the natural seasonal vegetative power: every year the plants are cutted, the soil is worked, landscape staging follows the rythm of the seasons.
The maintenance is totally mechanized (like in a rural extensive area). The garden is extremely dynamic: the gardeners mantain the Megaphorbiae and change the disposition of the different species; this continuous changement encourages the dialogue with the public, and even the exchange os seeds.
Different parcels are composed mixing plants with particular colour effects, different heights and tactile/morphological habits. The constant motion of nature is shown, exhibiting a wide variety of colourful vegetation Near the flowering hedges some panels detail the plants to look at. For example in Parcel n. 2 there are flowering plants with pale colours (in september 2018- first stripe: Indingofera gerardiana, Nepeta fasseni “Six Hills Giants”, Nepeta sibirica “Andrè Chaudron”, Centaurea dealbata, Agapanthus x d headbourne Bleu; second stripe: Dicentra
spectabilis “gold heart”, Hosta funkia “T-rex”, Geranium macrorrhizum, Geranium sanguineum
“Vision rose clair”, Pennisetum japonicum, Spirea japonica “Little princess”; third stripe: Astilbe
arendsii “snow star”, Perowskia abrotanoides; fourth stripe: Succisella inflexa, Panicum virgatum “Rehbraun”, Heuchera villosa”caramel”, Heucheria sanguinea “ruby bells”;fifth stripe: Panicum virgatum, Panicum virgatus “Heavy metal”/”Cloud nine”, Ceanothus delilianus “Marie
Simon”/”Gloire de Versaillles”, Lagerstroemia indica); in parcel n. 4 there are stripes of tufty gray-blue plants (in september 2018- Salix gracilistyla, Andropogon garardi, Sorghastrum
mutans “Indian steel”, Aster novae-angliae “Andeken an alma”, “Constance”, “Rosanna”,
“Andeken an Paul Gerber” / Salix irrorata, Salix aurita, Salvia chamaelygoides “Silver leaves”,
Glaucium flavum, Verbena venosa “Polaris”, Stipa gigantea, Lychnis coronaria, Delosperma cooperi / Iris pallida, Salvia nemorosa, Perowskia abrotanoides. Miscanthus sinensis “Fernster
Oster”, e “Yaku Jima”, Salix acutifolia “Pendulifolia”, Salix fragilis / Eupatoriom purpureum,
Salix alba “vitellina” e “sericea”, Sasa tsuboiana).
Repeating a similar formal composition is the striped garden along the river Garonne in Bordeaux, near the “water mirror” in front of the historic Place de la Bourse, realised by M.
Corajoud in 2006.
The realization along the riverbank has changed this site into a successfully revitalized part of the city, where different activities can take place, at different times of the day, answering different social needs. The cultivated garden in this case is no more inside a protected park, but in an open urban area, always available for different user,.
Fig. 5 View of the “Megaphorb Garden” in September 2018: different heights of two species of Rudbeckia, with their yellow flowers.
Fig. 7 The metal plate inserted in the paved path: “Parcel n. 1: Little slight flowers mixed with grass plants”.
The “Chromatic Garden”
The Megaphorb Garden becames a “Colour Garden” when the day turns into night. The realization by Laurent Fachard is a particular work of landscape illumination, with lighting of the vegetation, to be perceived fron sunset until the closing of the Park, at 10,30 pm., changing the Park in a nocturnal stage-set, where people can walk. The lighting project responds to functional needs for visual information, related to the activities in the park, but unlike a common anaesthetising sodium lighting of the city, trying to reproduce a daytime appearance, this artistic project permits other perceptions.
In the special moment of sunset, with boldly refractions and low-angled lights, the human eye can perceive chromatic distortions from selected colours of natural light, like the brilliant yellows, the orangey shades and the reds of the sun.
The lighting concept transposes the landscape through the use of colour, changing perpectives and creating some new spatial interpretation, moving from daytime reality to something unreal and imaginary, towards the suggestion of an extraordinary nocturnal experience, playing a metaphore of nature, turning the park into a magic place, where the diversity of plants is celebrated plunging the park into a symphony of colours.
The Park at night can a be a place for entertainment and culture, contemplation and discovery. Coloured light makes the pursuit of exceptional events and reveals landscape characteristics and the peculiarities of the park., painting varied and dynamic lighting environments
The lights underline 3 different types of hierarchical spaces: the promenade avenues (20-30 lux), the large and small meadows (1-5 lux) and the “Megaphorb Garden” (3-300 lux), where light and colour create different atmospheres, enphasing the vegetation, with shaded areas and visual rest. Colours are obtained by colored metal halide lamps or filters.
The coloured lights activate and increase the difference between simultaneous chromatic contrasts, they elicit emotions, ranging from euphoria or marvelling at polychromy to the deep calm of a bluish half-light. Colours like mauve and red can enhance and sharpen visual acuity in low light.
The entrances to the park are conceived as a gate, signed by a threshold of light.
The avenues have indirect lighting, distributed in staggered rows, with different colours for each different way.
The Megaphorb Garden becomes the main luminous event of the park, by three-color accent lighting (red/green/blue), in which nature is transfigured and shown under a new aspect. At night, the flowers take on other colours and their leaves shine with their own coloured shady light, creating an impressionist scenery. Red poppies are darked with blue, the green of the
Miscanthus turns red before Autumn, the wild geranium pales in the violet, the gilly flowers
become orange. The lavander and grains are refreshed by green light and the carpet of forget-me-not are super-satured in the blue.
The square rest area in the middle of the garden becomes an island of light, lit by strings of coloured light. Dynamic lights lit the outdoor skate park, by the use of colured beams of light and masks, playing in a synchronised movement.
The light gives chromatic volume to the mist of the fog system, that can be seen from the opposite bank of the river, as the entrances and the north-south crossing walkways, becoming new nocturnal landmarks. Some big trees are accented in blue and green, through a wise gradation to pass from the colourful Megaphorb Garden to the bluish deep meadows.
A sound installation inside the “Chromatic Garden"
The “Animots” sound installation adds a sonic and musical dimension to the visual and olfactory perceptions of the park, which aims and arouses the playful interest of the walk with surprising effects.
The installation enhances and amplifies the plant composition of the Megaforbie through a virtual game that is based on the evocation of the sounds of small animals living in the garden: like myriads of small sounding touches reminiscent of amphibians, insects or birds, sometimes indefinable because electronically mixed. The musical composition uses the laws that describe the behaviour of chance: its distribution on the 16 sound speakers are programmed so random from a computer, which handles more than 600 numbered sounds.
The resulting unpredictable sounds are natural or interpreted by a synthesizer, to reproduce a series of sounds between realism and abstraction. The installation, designed by the composer Pierre-Alain Jaffrenou, runs throughout the opening of the park, also when the lights of the “Chromatic Garden” are playing.
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