Urban Oasis

  If historic gardens in the Middle East and central and south Asia, with their emphasis on water features, are reminiscent of lush green oases, it’s for a reason. The geometries that unfold toward the gardens’ periphery, perhaps from a central star at their center, are classic representations of paradise in the arid climate in […]

 

If historic gardens in the Middle East and central and south Asia, with their emphasis on water features, are reminiscent of lush green oases, it’s for a reason. The geometries that unfold toward the gardens’ periphery, perhaps from a central star at their center, are classic representations of paradise in the arid climate in which this particular style was born. As part of the ongoing Jardins D’Orient, or Gardens of the Orient, exhibition, landscape architect Michel Péna has designed the “ephemeral garden” in the forecourt of Paris’s IMA, the Arab World Institute. Visitors to the “ephemeral” or “arable” gardens, which float at an angle above the forecourt, can take it in from a “circuit of terraces” or from its base, giving them the perspective of an external viewer or of being an element in the garden itself.

“The garden,” Péna says, “is an interpretation and not a copy of an Oriental garden,” a welcoming space within an environment in which natural, lush greenery of this kind is sparse. Created without digging into the earth or putting undue stress on the thin tiles of the forecourt, this work offers respite from the concrete jungles so many of us inhabit. After all, asks Péna, while it might be inspired by the gardens travelers in the desert relished centuries ago, “is this not also the dream of city dwellers who feel lost in their manmade environment?”

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