The essence of gardens

Sometimes the most poignant qualities of a site come not from what is actually there, but from what is connected to it, through time and space, by our recollections and hopes. The Poetics of Gardens It is all too easy to think of gardens as consisting simply of physical stuff — of plants and paths, [...]

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Square Louis XVI

The little park around the Chapelle Expiatoire on boulevard Haussman is traditionally planted with white flowers, in memory of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. So it was somehow fitting to visit yesterday during a major snowstorm in Paris. Everything was rapidly being engulfed in deep, soft whiteness. This place was once the cemetery of La [...]

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Parc de La Villette

Today it is fashionable to grapple with the idea of collective meaning and memory in landscapes. Conferences are held, books written, different styles of garden analysed, all debating how far deliberate messages and associations can be conveyed through designed landscapes. My favourite article on the topic is Marc Treib’s wry “Must Landscapes Mean?” which examines [...]

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Pre-existing memories of Giverny

An exhibition of Monet’s work opened this week at the Grand Palais. It is the first retrospective of his paintings for around 30 years in Paris, where he remains resolutely unfashionable. His gardens at Giverny, in Normandy, are a major tourist destination. We visited last year and found the little town packed with visitors, all [...]

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Monuments and Memories

Is heritage about things or about people? Last Friday I attended a conference in London, organised by Europa Nostra and ICOMOS UK, which considered this question. Called “Monuments and Memories,” the conference was partly about the 2003 UNESCO convention on the intangible cultural heritage – which I now understand aims to protect performing arts, traditional [...]

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Book review: Spatial Recall

Marc Treib is one of my favourite writers about landscapes. He is thought-provoking, prolific and easy-to-read, perhaps the three qualities to which I most aspire. So it was with pleasure that I bought Spatial Recall, the collection of essays he edited last year on the role of memory in architecture and landscape. Each chapter is [...]

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