Garden in Memory of the Paris Attacks — 13 November 2015

The 13 November Garden lies in the historic heart of Paris. It does not stand on any of the sites attacked that night. Instead, it occupies a separate ground — both elsewhere and yet composed of those six places targeted on 13 November 2015. Here, they are brought together within a single landscape.

The garden holds the memory of that evening. It reflects the lived reality of northeastern Paris on 13 November 2015.

The footprints of the six attack sites and their immediate surroundings are lifted from the city map, abstracted and reassembled to shape the garden’s structure. From the fractured, stony ground of Paris, a space of calm and legibility emerges.

As visitors move through the garden, they may experience a sense of recognition and dislocation. Places once ordinary — cafés, a concert hall, street corners — appear subtly estranged, recalling the moment when everyday life abruptly broke apart. The Paris that was lived and shared that night becomes, here, a landscape for reflection.

A city overturned.

This is a place where one may regain one’s bearings — or deliberately lose them. A place for walking, for quiet thought, and for children at play. After rainfall, birds gather in shallow stone basins. The garden is both a site of remembrance and a quiet affirmation of life.

At night, it is gently lit. Points of light shimmer across the ground, forming a constellation that evokes the star-filled sky of 13 November 2015 — present, night after night.

>>> VIDEO :

CLIENT
Ville de Paris – Paris City Council

TEAM PROJECT
Wagon Landscaping (leader)
Gilles Clément
SOJA architecture
AREP – technics and structure
JM Dreyfus Historian specialist on memory
Pratiques Urbaines, urbanist
Monono, socilogist
Biotope, environment engineers
Cronos City Lab, Security and Surety

SURFACE
3 500 m²

Budget
5 M° euros

Delivery date
20th of june 2025

https://maps.app.goo.gl/iTZuft7mxxtzmoK37