Conference at Centre Pompidou : Gilles Clément

Titled Histoire des Trente, le parc André Citroën, Gilles Clément spoke this time of his work, and only briefly touched on his current political activity. I will list a few of his main points, simply

• The idea of a garden passes beyond the garden itself
• He proposed to move forward with the idea of Jardin Planétaire, with the idea that the world is itself a garden, and we need to realize and understand its different parts; in order to move in the right direction.
• The idea of diversity in the garden is what most strongly interests him. He showed pictures of plantation forests juxtaposed with places of vegetated diversity.
• The ‘third landscape’ is the space where we will see the future in what will pass, what plants are now natural.

He went on to describe his process of building his house and garden in la Creuse. He lived in a tent of sorts for two years while he found materials and constructed his house. It is made nearly entirely by him and students, with the help of local craftspeople on the areas he didn’t know how to do. He begun the idea of jardin en mouvement there, in his personal garden.

He continued with speaking on parc André Citroën itself. He showed pictures of gardeners with lawnmowers, and explained that in this garden, they are quite happy, since they are designing as they go. There are definite choices to be made, which separates this from the third landscape, which is not the same is third nature (Third nature being a garden, tended by humans) He talked about his inspirations from his various tours of the world. He apparently spent some time living in many different places, and got to know many cultures.

He spent the majority of the time talking about his idea of “Tiers paysage”. I am in the midst of reading his “Manifeste du Tiers paysage”, which I picked up at the conference. I will make a post of that soon…

His closing remarks were that we must protect the Tiers paysage, from the spaces adjacent to roadways to post industrial lands, in order learn from nature on natural terms. The tiers paysage holds the keys to understanding nature now.