Shortlisted in Offices / Jury 2018:

Atelier ROBERTA

Office Profile All / France /
atelierroberta.com

Céline Aubernias, Alice Mahin and Chloé Sanson, started their teamwork at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles before engaging on unique paths: Chloé Sanson developed her work in the field of illustration, Céline Aubernias joined the teams of renowned landscape and architecture firms such as Mutabilis and Atelier Jean Nouvel, while Alice Mahin started her own practice in 2007 to focus mostly on public projects. Winner of the French Culture Ministry’s Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes Award in 2012, Atelier Roberta seeks to preserve an eclectic practice of landscape architecture – deliberately choosing not to specialize and to maintain a multidisciplinary approach of classic project management, territory landscape studies, artistic projects, teaching and illustration. This diversity allows them to apply a transverse vision to landscape, avoiding any systematism, and to offer an approach always tailored to the site and project at hand.

These common beliefs that they support now and that define their vision of what a landscape must be like , their ” war – horses” so to speak, are the main prism which all their projects go through .

TIME : It’s a capital component and an essential part of their work. The numerous times of the life of a site become part of each project and consider its development. For instance, a space must know how to develop following the growth of a tree, but at the same time comes to life with the rhythm each season gives. Moreover, as soon as the project is starting, they strive to integrate the conditions of its later management : ( early meetings with various technical departments – getting a maintenance guide ready – suggesting keeping up looking after the site every year ).

GETTING INTO ACTION : They believe the landscape is alive. It’s a landscape only as a result of natural conditions which have changed, taken place or at least have been perceived by human beings.

PLEASURE : If the poetry of a place can’t be drawn, they think it naturally appears in a project where a sensitive attention to the site leads up to details :
Roberta thinks decoration deserves to be enhanced again and that searching for pleasure in every project is not opposed to integrating questions about environment .
In the same way , while being not too expensive, a project may be generous and include a real study of colours.

COMMON SENSE : In their opinion, the economics of a project must be carried out with a clever and modern comprehension of all spaces. In the same way : ” sustainable development ” flows from common sense suggestions for that project :
– being imaginative by using local resources ( materials and savoir-faire )
– considering a differentiated management
– offering life conditions to a great biodiversity.

Water theater

The parti pri of the requalification of the Fumel swimming pool was to re-think its implementation and its reorganization on the site, to at once offer an optimal use of its equipment and allow a better foot print in its context. The massive building which was juxtaposed to the pools was replaced by a series of small light-built buildings that accompany the user through a path, invite him to discover the site and progressively go towards the pools located on the lower part of the grounds. The project nears this site as a landscape fragment in continuity with the natural existing area : it recreates a geography coherent with the hillside : a softer landscape greets, in contrast, the unique and geometrical objects that are the buildings, pools, games…

The vegetal parti pri which consisted of extending bits of the natural area present on the north side and particularly on the south side of the site, drove the conception of an oak grove, with its own particularities, creating an unexpected setting for swimming.

Lübeck, the Institute’s Park

In Paris’ 16th district this private school is dedicated to children from three to eighteen years old.The site was considerably damaged and had an intricate way of working. The project suggests giving it a true identity as a park planted with trees in which the spaces devoted to different sections have a life of their own. The plan, without dividing the entire space of the establishment, allows clearly identified sub-spaces devoted to the different sections: Kinder garden, Elementary and Secondary schools. The project also draws benefit from the sloping topography of the site to create vast terraced grounds one after another. Each slope dividing these terraced gardens is planted with groves, acting as filters in between the yards. These groves generate a strong presence of vegetation; they allow to renew the plantations to create a new heritage being sustained and adapted to the different purposes of the site. Just like a scenery the park would be set in, the project links the frontages of the buildings and makes them live and talk within the park. On the ground, a colorful composition made by painted stripes is a spatial reference for the school children and also marks games played in the different sub-spaces of their yards.

Happy Event

For this birthday edition of the “Architectures Vives” Festival, which indeed has to be duly celebrated, we’ve imagined a short-lived arrangement yet able to entirely disappear without any rubbish being left behind afterwards.We suggest making a very special cake. It ‘ll be poured and set up on the ground and will surge there as an amazing presence.This strange pastry is to be made of ” Agar Agar “, a special nourishing jelly whose evanescent presence is used as a means of growth. Thousands of seeds will be sown and this sowed surface will be evolving as long as the festival lasts.Visitors will be able to watch the processes of germination and growth for as long as the festival lasts.On the final day, the cake will be cut and shared, not to be eaten of course, but for each slice to be carried away and sown at home where the seeds will finish growing and burst into flowers.Thus, the arrangement simply disappears into every one’s hands and everyone takes its own helping to make it grow somewhere else.

Trees in troops and in circle

Situated in the heart of a brand new neighborhood the school has two sorts of frontage. The landscape project responds to them with two sorts of vegetal ambiences. At the northeast part of the site, the building offers the frontage of a public equipment on a square, as a main entrance. Openings at regular intervals in the facade provide a view of the activities taking place there and showcase the plantings that echo a certain exotic style the architecture has already acquainted us with. The southeast frontage of the plot is quite wide. Windows provide a view into the very heart of the school, and extend main lines of the new neighborhood, organized around its park. The rural atmosphere of the park nearby, is enhanced in the elementary school yard by the choices of ground materials and native plants. Both yards, each in its own way, develop a particular identity. The patio inside the nursery school declines various interpretations of the circle shape, and even its trees are planted as if they were creating a circle. The elementary schoolyard is structured by rows of trees and trees planted as little troops that define interesting sub-spaces, playgrounds of a new type.

Grand Voyeux

On the Grand Voyeux estate, the gravel mine and later the environmental work leading to the recovery of its original state have allowed rare particular species of birds to settle. The owner wishes to test there a new experiment : its classification as an official Regional Nature Reserve while also allowing a public access to its central part. This innovative aspect has led us to study a special walking path. While enhancing these grounds without causing trouble to its inhabitants and strengthening the feeling of a wide open landscape, the footpath is intimate and defined, strictly limiting its impact on the surroundings. The path is purposely very narrow to ensure that people will realize the exceptional character of this permission to visit the land of birds, as if each one is ” a guest of honor ” there. The necessity for our ” bipeds ” to be quite unobtrusive while they walk along, coupled with accessibility constraints, lead us to design paths that sometimes surprisingly became, virtually, elements of sculptures. Their artificial character has been highlighted to enhance the role Nature now plays in this formerly deeply disturbed area.