Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture: - School of ...

The overpasses in the Solognote forest on motorway A85 between Angers and Tours (1993–7) were designed and
planted to mimimise disruption by the motorway of forest paths used by wildlife.
of local residents who had failed in their attempts to prevent
the construction of this Modernist building by Pierre Riboulet,
the municipality now demanded that the white building be
transformed into a verdant hill.
The Colas Building was separated from its neighbours by a
small municipal playground. Lassus proposed enlarging the
playground in the direction of the building, and softening the
contrast between the two areas by redesigning the
playground’s hedges and using the same pattern to frame the
long cruise-ship gangways along the building – an
arrangement that hid the reception terrace behind the trees
in the playground. In addition, a colourful flower parterre was
planted on a service area that was visible from some of the
neighbouring apartments.
As a result of Lassus’s changes, the local residents began
to adopt a new attitude towards the corporation and to
develop an interest in its engagement with Modernist
architecture and contemporary garden art. The lower terrace
was designed to receive large groups of guests attending
conferences or events organised by the corporation. Lassus
transformed this space into a green room in a bosquet
animated by a fountain. And to invite guests to participate
in debates about nature and modernity, he made an abstract
rock cascade out of wood, abstract hedges and trees out of
perforated metal slabs, and abstract flowers out of painted
enamel. He also gave the owner the chance to play with the
seasons by changing the trees at will. 1
The great success of the Garden of Seasons among its
visitors encouraged the chairman to ask Lassus to take on
another project in the autumn of 2006, this time to create two
zero-maintenance gardens on the upper terraces of the
corporation’s neighbouring office building. The main terrace –
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