Bassinet Turquin Paysage is a deliberately generalist landscape agency. It takes action at all scales, on all types of programs and contexts, in France or abroad. Whether an agent or a co-contractor, it collaborates with project owners and partners from any path of life. Created in November 2010 in Paris, the agency gathers landscape designers Grégoire Bassinet and Rémy Turquin, a team of collaborators with varied and complementary profiles. Serving projects, of those who carry them as well as those who will practice them, it claims a transversal vision of the development by claiming the landscape project force capturing all its dimensions (aesthetic, practical, ecological, social, economic, technical and cultural, etc.).
Two means made us came to landscape: one for the garden, another for the drawing. We have experienced this complementarity during our studies at the ENSNP in Blois, whose ambition displayed since its creation is to develop balanced minds, both sensitive and precise, «the right brain and the left brain». Graduated in 2005 with the aim to set up our agency, we made the choice to continue our «training» to gain maturity and acquire sufficient experience in this business. After having worked for a time in the same structure, we committed ourselves, in two different directions, to cultivate our singularities and to juxtapose complementary points of view on landscape. Grégoire deals with operational management of landscape projects from the upstream phases to the implementation and monitoring phases of each site; Rémy tests design methods in various large European architecture, town planning and landscape agencies.
Far from being simple abstractions, our work is based on a contextualized and sensitive approach to the sites on which we operate. Each site is thus an opportunity to question the plurality of understanding scales from an interterritorial perspective, whether it is a matter of «echoing» and / or to “dialogue with”. This spatial projection implies a projection in time ; a site observed in the light of territorial transformations, mutations and its living material evolution that is landscape. Each site is therefore an opportunity to specifically activate its components, up to abstracting them if necessary, depending on the nature of the program and the project intention.
Our knowledge of different spatial design professions allows us to adapt to all types of contexts. We cultivate this quality by always trying to adopt the fairest position according to the order challenges, expectations of various stakeholders (whether customers or partners) and expectations of inhabitants («mastery workshop uses ” organized as part of our project in Pont-Audemer). We pay special attention to economic realism, projects practice we are working on and recommended solutions sustainability. This leads us to always offer suitable and sustainable solutions (minimalist interventions on the cemetery of Ermenonville) represented with accuracy and without artifice (technical viability of the vegetation proposed within the framework of the Musical Seine Garden).
Beyond the garden and the drawing, we give ourselves the means to apprehend the landscape in all its dimensions, whether poetic or scientific, aesthetic or functional. The construction of a common culture which would embrace all fields of landscape, spatial planning and creation in the broad sense is at the foundation of the agency project. Several tools, primarily the library agency (made up of more than a thousand books) and the “Landscape book” (Project collection capitalizing more than three thousand references), are thus thought of as a support for the sedimentation of this base of knowledge. Updated and amended as desired projects and collectively, they feed our work and are understood as projects by themselves, open and perfectible.
Affiliation with Parisian squares
A PARISIAN GARDEN
For the garden of this future residence at 12 quai Henri IV, we have chosen to revisit the model of the Parisian square. The landscape project aims to create a fruitful dialogue between the softness and modernity of the architectural curves and the elegance and accuracy of the design of Parisian squares. Parisian squares are a flagship of Parisian identity, part of a system designed by the design team of Baron Haussmann. These gardens are associated with the charms of the Capital and the Parisian way of life.
MODEL REWRITING
Nature, openly artificialized and staged, becomes a setting on a human scale. The densely planted space recreates an atmosphere of undergrowth. The eight beeches and the marbled maples contrast with the low layer composed of ground cover. This green setting is punctuated by colorful and olfactory events that are offered to the senses in small touches. The bicycle parking lot is housed in a rough concrete cave reminiscent of the rock gardens in the Buttes Chaumont garden. The privacy of the ground floor apartments is protected by hedges.
Location: Paris (4th) – 52, quai Henri IV – France / Duration: 2014-2016 / Area: 2000 m² / Mission: Complete mission / Client: Cogedim, Paris Habitat OPH / Project management team: Landscape architect in charge of landscape project: Bassinet Turquin Paysage / Architect responsible for the architectural project: LIN / Engineering: ARCOBA / Thermal: Pouget Consultants / Control office: Qualiconsult – AEMO – Seriation / Acoustics: AVEL Acoustics / Amount of works: 650,000 € HT (excluding buildings)
The village square in the shade of the big cedar
ONE PLACE, THREE ATMOSPHERES
Our aim is to define a space that is sufficiently unitary so that it becomes the central location of the village while introducing three atmospheres. The esplanade is a deliberately open and versatile space. On the ground, stainless steel pellets on a 3m frame embedded in a colored mix, orchestrate flexibility. The steps are a gentle link to the back of the square. It is a performance space that can be used as seating for shows or stands for wedding photos. The garden is a more secluded and peaceful space, made up of small trees, flower beds and shrubs, which create pictures that change with the seasons, conducive to contemplation and more intimate discussions.
Location: Mirabel (82) – place de la Mairie – France / Duration: 2012 – 2015 / Area: 2600 m2 / Mission: Full project management / Client: Municipality of Mirabel, SEMATEG / Project management team: Landscape designer for Bassinet Turquin Landscape project / Architect responsible for the architectural project: Xavier Leplaë / BET: Ginger BEFS / Cost of the works: € 540,000 excl.tax excluding building – € 1.1m excl.tax overall budget
To the rhythms of a calcareous lawn
A LANDSCAPE THAT LIES AT THE RHYTHM OF THE SEASONS
Garden and music have in common to make the passing of time perceptible by their variations in cycles. Thus, the overall composition of the garden is made from the widest range of rhythms that nature offers us (annuals, biennials, bulbs, perennials, deciduous essences, persistent essences) and arranged so that the color ranges reveal themselves through the seasons.
GEOGRAPHICAL ANCHOR
The topography and orientation of the site, its relationship with the Seine, magnify the views of the spectacle of the seasons that enlivens the garden, providing perspectives on the surrounding landscapes with which this garden interacts. Like Le Nôtre’s “green carpet” in the Meudon forest, the project asserts itself as a “collecting machine”.
Location: Boulogne-Billancourt (92) – Île Seguin – France / Duration: 2011-2017 / Area: 2.3 ha / Mission: Complete mission / Public person: General Council of Hauts-de-Seine / Client: Bouygues Bâtiment Ile de France PPP / Project management team Operator: SODEXO, TF1 / Architect: Shigeru Ban Architects Europe, Jean de Gastines Architectes / Landscaper: Bassinet Turquin Paysage / Scenography: dUCKS Séno / Acoustician: Nagata acoustics – Lamoureux acoustics / BET Structure: SETEC, RFR / Fluid BET: ARTELIA / BET ecologist: ELAN / Cost of works: 2.5 M € HT landscape – 170 M € HT overall budget / First BiodiverCity® labeled project in the world / Refuges site, label issued by the bird protection league
Seaside resort and dune horizontality
A LINK BETWEEN URBAN AND LANDSCAPE
Avenue Houdart or Avenue “qui-led-à-la-Mer” is to be reactivated. Our action is to give it a real status of walk thanks to a better modal sharing by making good use of soft traffic (pedestrians, bikes, rollerblades, etc.) and soothe motorized traffic.
It must promote real comfort in use, encouraging strolling and stopping in the middle of a solid and inspiring landscape. For this, we will rely on the following criteria:
– design on a pedestrian scale;
– offer diversified amenities, aimed at a wide range of people (tourists or residents, of all ages);
– promote appropriation according to events and support many non-predetermined uses, install usable furniture in different postures and gatherings.
Location: Merville-Franceville-Plage (14) – France / Duration: 2018-2019 / Area: 13,000 m² / Mission: Complete mission / Client: Municipality of Merville- Franceville-Plage / Project management team: Landscape architect in charge of the Bassinet Turquin Landscape project / Architect and Town Planning: Atelier Julien Bodoit / BET roads and various networks: Lollier ingénérie / Study and works engineer: Yohan Oms / Study and works engineer: Samuel Lollier / Cost of works: 1.5 M € HT (excluding buildings) – 1.75 M € HT (global budget)
The Garden of a Thousand Islands
HANGHZOU, THE CITY OF THE GARDENS
The West Lake is the landmark of the city of Hangzhou. On and around this lake develops a skillfully orchestrated set of causeways, islands, bridges, gardens, ornamental plantations, pagodas and temples. This landscape often perceived as an authentic and emblematic landscape of China, is in reality an anthropic landscape, leader of a tradition of beautification of the landscape, presenting nature as paintings and reflecting an idealized fusion between man and nature.
THE GARDEN OF 1000 ISLANDS
The “East Lake” takes the attributes of its model and adapts them to a more urban environment. On a 34-hectare site in the heart of a developing district, at the interface of the train station and the future opera house, the project offers four types of spaces and atmospheres that interact with the surrounding fabric. A garden formed by a labyrinth of islands of various sizes and shapes connected by pontoons, gives the impression of walking on the water and creates a series of panoramas developing the effects of perspectives.
Location: Yuhang, Hangzhou – China / Duration: 2013-2019 / Area: 34 ha / Mission: Design / Client: Hangzhou Government, Yuhang District / Project management team: Architect Henning Larsen Architects / Planner: John Thompson & Partners / Landscaper: Bassinet Turquin Paysage / Generalist BET: BuroHappold / Economist: Langdon & Seah / Amount of work: Not communicable