Landscape architect Clément Willemin is a co-founder of the French bureau BASE with offices in Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux.
Archi. RU:
At the bureau BASE has many projects for the reconstruction of embankments, design of sea and river banks, for example, for Nantes and Lyon. What are the main decisions you have developed to renovate such zones and "connect" them to the city?
Clement Wilmain:
- Most cities that have a resource - a location near the water - the sea, river or lake, now want to get closer to it. Water raises a whole new set of questions: it is viewed both as a threat (suffice it to recall Hurricane Katrina, [which devastated the US southeastern coast] in 2005) and as a tremendous value (for example, [lakes] in Switzerland). It is amazing how many cities have turned back to their rivers, for the sake of this, rebuilding their relationship with water. In most cases, such projects are a real opportunity to introduce a complex ecosystem into urban systems - in addition to expanding public spaces. Plants are able to filter polluted water and also keep the "natural" shores in good condition. And this is just the beginning.
A very interesting topic is how large technical projects to clean up the polluted environment can interact with linear infrastructure associated with city beaches and embankments. After all, we would all like to swim everywhere or almost everywhere, in every city, especially if we manage to walk along the water and see how polluted it is still. When we get close to water, we sense a gap between the current situation and the one we would like to hope for: clean rivers, lakes and oceans. In this sense, landscape projects for river banks can be seen as the first steps towards the renewal of all natural and artificial water systems.
– BASE in a consortium with the Moscow bureau IND architects has reached the final of the competition for the concept of the development of the embankments of the Kaban lakes in Kazan. What turned out to be the most interesting for you in this work?
“We were very interested in the Tatar culture, which we knew very little about before, and it became an important source of inspiration for our project. And the huge challenge of this work is the problem of environmental pollution.
Moscow industrial zones are now actively turning into new areas of mixed development, and therefore the issue of their regeneration is very urgent in the city. Based on your experience, what is the main role of a landscape architect in such projects?
- Landscape architecture is able to "promote" sites, transform them into new territories from a visual, social and intellectual point of view, working on the deep nature of the place. As a matter of fact, sometimes the residents themselves have this ability. From our point of view, the landscape can always be seen as an economic or even hedonistic cooperation between people and their territory.
Especially interesting are those landscape projects where time is a key factor, those cases when the city can no longer afford to leave everything as it is and allow the situation to develop naturally. Landscape architecture is a possible way of working with the “physiognomy” of these areas to make them part of the “urban experience”, the perception of the city. And it is very fortunate that some of these zones are completely new, because they are more free. Each quarter always makes a choice between integration (to be like everyone else) and a gap (to be unique). But in the second case, a whole lot of work is needed to create his identity.
Most of the districts of large Russian cities have been built up since the 1950s with panel housing and standard infrastructure. Now these vast territories are in dire need of renovation, so we are always interested in French projects aimed at solving the same problems. What are the main challenges facing the reconstruction of post-war residential areas in France, and how can landscape architecture help solve them?
- We believe that the post-war housing program, in fact, has not yet been completed. It takes a long time to create a city. And it also takes several attempts - especially where people were "planted" and have lived since then, overcoming difficulties every day. Indeed, public space is more often than not a big problem. Architecture may be a "constructed" state, but public space is a social, political and collective state, therefore much more powerful and with a striking influence on the perceptions, assessments and hopes [of the inhabitant] about his own capabilities.
People deserve pleasant spaces in their own neighborhood or around the corner from home, where they can socialize, play sports, drive children to play - do what you want and / or cannot do in your apartment. This is even more true for young people. What should teenagers do in areas where public space is limited to its basic functions, mostly related to cars? We always start a project with community scenarios, human stories, program design, not planning.
To answer the question more specifically: our difficulties are always the same: the economy and cars.
In recent years, the authorities and residents have begun to treat with great attention to public spaces in Russian cities. Of course, the climate in Russia is very different from the climate in Western Europe, but the problem of the all-season use of public spaces exists both there and there. What, in your opinion, are the possible means of attracting “users” to public areas during the cold season?
- From our point of view, climate is not necessarily a problem in terms of the use of public spaces. In Canada and Scandinavia they say: there is no bad climate, there are bad clothes. At the same time, many Russian cities are in a continental climate zone with very cold winters and - at times - very hot summers. Like spaces and cultural traditions, climate is a condition that can sometimes be turned into an element of infrastructure, a kind of landscape “motive”.
Our shared latitudes may have very few year-round uses of space, but a good collective program, such as a playground or party space, although it will be used for two months of the year, will change the city block as much and at the same time easily than any layout. … As for the colder months, objects for children are always a good option.
At BASE has projects implemented outside of mainland France, for example, on Reunion Island off the east coast of Africa. The profession of an architect is becoming more and more global these days. Sometimes it is difficult to design for a well-known site, and international projects bring an entirely new level of complexity … How can adapt to such situations ?
- Another good question. Sometimes it turns out that it is best seen from afar - and for a landscape designer it will not be inconvenient!
