The Après la Pluie agency does complete studies and is general contractor for landscaping and public grounds. The work goes from the analysis of the land, urban studies, preoperational studies, developing projects and technical adaptation and continues on the work site until the completion of the work. Created in 2010, Après la Pluie team is comprised of two landscape architects/engineers, Anne-Sophie Verriest and Nicolas Renard. In its project’s approach the agency simultaneously addresses the technical, poetical and functional dimensions. Après la Pluie is motivated by the desire to create quality grounds, both in the uses and ambiences, in agreement with today’s sustainable techniques. Après la Pluie’s competence include landscape projects and urban planning, heritage projects, ecological and hydraulic engineering, favoring an educational approach.
Atmospheres
The landscape has is roots from a long, complex and meaningful history. This creative topics carries the challenges that place the territory at the center of reflections. Creator of economic, social, cultural, and environmental development, it is an accelerator of the attractiveness and influence of a territory. We envision our approach on small or large scales through exemplary mutations, while being respectful of the site, its form and its history. Our interventions aim to imagine a project beyond the planned programmatic status, to question, test and deconstruct certainties, to bring out a new, innovative future, a new paradigm.
We are sensitive to the notion of attachment, and we always seek to offer a landscape that provides affection, sensations, a landscape devoted pleasure, distraction, and evanescent leisure. We think, to create collective dream spaces. The landscape brings a joyful dynamic, it makes possible improbable meetings, unprecedented public goods, extra ordinary discoveries, collaborations that seek only to continue. One of the major challenges of our profession is to translate a contemporary project without distorting the identity and the soul of the sites on which we work. It is a question of finding in the spatial composition what makes the very essence of the place, what will again make its soul. The word contemporary is used here in the sense of a development that benefits and capitalizes on the heritage of the past and on the current challenges of sustainable development, comfort, knowledge and life in common. The relation to time is essential as well. It serves to affirm the landscape’s and plants plasticity, their elasticity, their possible metamorphoses, in different time, in seasons, over events.
Environmental Approach
The desire to establish an environmental approach requires solving problems of discontinuity, division, and projects only having been partially taken into account. This desire for an environmental approach when dealing with a project imposes holistic reflection and the elaboration of answers that requires adapting the methods of conception, backed by eco-conception, eco-management and eco-worksite philosophy to each situation. The Après la Pluie agency develops the project with a strong will to sustainable development, such as the affirmation of combined approaches, integrated and long lasting, from the start of the studies, the analysis of the project, to the worksite management. All the transversal aspects of sustainable development are taken into account: cultural, environmental, social and economic.
Inaugurated in 1994, the Park Diderot is probably the most well known achievement in France by the landscape designer Allain Provost, illustrating his erudite approach to gardens, his rigourous approach to the project, and noteworthy for the history of gardens.
This garden is considered as an element in the end of the 20th century French heritage; despite a few problems of dilapidation and difficult access, the garden has maintained all of its conceptual framework. The renovation is carried out with respect for the initial project, associated with a contemporary approach and adaptation to new uses to guarantee the durability. Updating certain norms has proven to be necessary too, while preserving the the spirit of the original conception. A phytosanitary diagnosis identified the dying subjects and envisaged the conditions of maintaining the tree planted stratum. The bushes and perennial plants are renewed, soil amended, locks restored, and furniture replaced, so that this park is returned to the residents and users of the Defense without transforming the original conception.
Credit photo : ©après la pluie
The Ecole Normale Superieure in Cachan is joining the French high school on the Saclay plateau in the framework of the project of the grand Paris resulting in a new centrality in the geographic and strategic positioning of research and development in Ile de France.
Sheltered from the winds on the plateau and inside the area formed by the buildings, this garden affords all the ingredients necessary for a moment of calm, charm and poetry.
Like the school, this garden is open and accessible, a convivial location to meet up, do research, mingle, and experiment.
The composition of the garden accompanies the distribution of functions in the buiding. The main forecourt and the grand canal in the garden highlight the science gallery to the north. It welcomes the important moments in the life of the school: festivities such as exhibitions and student gatherings.
At the foot of the facades, functional circulation serves each of the school buildings and acts as a transition to the garden. At the same time, it allows going around the garden and getting an outside view without crossing a wide edge.
In the heart of the garden will be plants that come from research that will be staged and a collection of cultivars, showing their particularities.
The polychrome garden offers surprising and rich ambiences that can be discovered day by day, season after season, year after year.
Credit photo : ©après la pluie
Meudon Val Fleury’s station differs from previous stations by its small size and its appearance of a Ile-de-France stone mill house. The topography plays an important role in this transition as the station is located in the valley. The proximity of the station has turned this area into a parking lot. It is used both by local residents but also by travelers who leave their cars for the day. The shops are also numerous and require minute stops around the square. However, the parking lot and the traffic where no longer manageable in this restricted place, for his inner-city neighborhood and all the users. Now, the Brousse place becomes a pleasant, peaceful and friendly pedestrian place, since the traffic directions and the parking has been reorganized. The project is highlighting more convenient connexons between the square and the station. The ancient levelling barrier has been transformed into an elegant and custom stairs made with a light granite stone, contrasting to the red buildings façades.
Credit photo : ©après la pluie
The Nîmes park of the “Bois des Noyers” proposes to discover the local environment, biodiversity, and a specific walking on its almost 10 000 m2. The afforestation of walnut trees, mixed with alders, cherry trees, almond trees, was planted more than thirty years ago. It now offers specials atmospheres that cannot be found anywhere else in Nîmes. The project plans, through this wooded area, to diversify and preserve ecological environments, to develop a place dedicated to environmental education and a place of production and sharing. In the heart of the walnut wood, several plots of equal geometric shapes accommodate complementary plants and program’s typologies: playground, sports course, square, pétanque area…. This natural woody cord in a warm and dry environment provides sought-after shade for family outings and walks. Custom signage and playground were created by the agency, following several consultation workshops with residents and local workers. The “haie plessée” serves as natural shelters for small mammals and protects as well the ecological zones where nest bats and where you can find a sublime orchid.named Epipactis du Rhône.
Credit photo : ©après la pluie
On the 27 hectars of the former Lagord military terrain, the conurbation is developing an urban operation that willl be a technological, economic, and social showcase for tomorrow’s sustainable quartiers. The activity will welcome innovative firms in the domains of eco-efficenct energy and the rehabilitation of buildings with environmental standards such as:
• A laboratory hub (experimental lab)
• An educational hub with the creation of a vocational training center in the technologies and processes in sustainable construction
• The new regional headquarters of the Crédit Agricole bank
• A residential hub with housing for 300.
The Public Park estabiishes a connection with the elements in the programs. It is organized to obtain the best environmental track-record.
Particular attention is paid to the choice of plants and the recycling of material in place to permit mastering energy consumption during the implementation and running.
The park is also a new leisure, relaxation and meeting area for the Lagord inhabitants be they already settled or to come.
Credit photo : ©après la pluie
