“Le Couvent des Minimes” takes place in the city of Mane, located in the “Durance” valley, south from the Alps mountains. The project renovates and transforms this ancient religious building into a high class hotel. The renovation of the gardens is committed to preservation of an ancient landscape heritage, while assuring its visibility and continuity in the present.
The Couvent des Minimes was founded in 1613. Through time, it welcomed many religious orders and was then transformed into a hospice in the middle of the 70’. The last nuns left in 1999.
Its structure reflects the XVII century, in which lands of culture, gardens, fountains, terrasses with wines, alleys with cypress, fishponds, colonnades and pavilions were part of the typical toscan gardens. Those elements are still visible today, and are apart of a much wider domain of 6,7 hectares, divided in smaller parts which had been transformed through time.
The city of Mane is located at 80 km East from Avignon, belongs to the “Lubéron du haut” region, on the Lure mountain, foothill of the Alps. The Couvent des Minimes, at 450 m of altitude, leans back on a combe which gives a spectacular perspective on the historical part of the city and its citadel, but also on cultivated parcels, white oaks forest, and the mountains to the South and East. The topography distinguish agricultural lands – combe occupied by orchards and lavender fields – which are overhung by terraces.
The Luberon is a mineral landscape, both harsh and generous. It is the country of the writer Jean Giono born in Manosque, who made quite a luminous story about it. The chapel and The Couvent des Minimes, as well as all the stone walls that structure the site are built with the characteristic clear limestone of the region.
The composition of the project and its materiality choose to continue the narrative by maintaining and taking advantage of the organization in successive terraces.
On the first one, a garden of Arbutus trees and its basin are established, and give the visitor a quiet place to meditate. On the second, a swimming pool and a terrace take place at the foot of the old plane tree which is a big symbol for the Couvent. On the third and fourth the visitor can find a pine garden connected to the old fishpond to rest and contemplate the view on the site.
The paths of the Couvent des Minimes are still built of stone (stone, gravel, paving, mulching) from the quarry of Lugan, the closest to the project. The design of the floors varies according to the characteristics of the place, sometimes rustic in the gardens, more refined around the buildings, the stone accompanies and guides visitors from place to place.
The Lubéron is a landscape of walls and terraces patiently built. Generations of farmers have shaped a territory marked by stone. The gardens of the Couvent exhibit this knowledge and develop an architecture of walls of two different natures: either stone re-employed from the site for extensions or restorations of existing walls, or white concrete for the new walls and retaining walls to give this new constructive step its readability.
The presence of water around Mane is discreet in this calcareous landscape. The Couvent des Minimes project aims to preserve this precious resource by installing plants accustomed to this climatic situation. Our work is inspired by the reflections led by nurserymen Clara and Olivier Filippi on the construction of Mediterranean dry gardens without resorting to watering. The plants were chosen young and planted in early winter. They are protected by a mineral mulch of 8 to 12cm that limits water loss and the arrival of competing plants.
The reference to the Mediterranean gardens is clear here. Therefore, the garden of Feuillée, the Pesquier basin, the water source and the pool use water with intelligence and delicacy and contribute to create a favorable and fresh climate.
The Couvent des Minimes has always been a garden. The accumulated plant heritage was the prerequisite for the garden project. The cedar groves, the monumental plane tree on the terrace or the holm oaks accompanying the Way of the Cross to the top of the terraces, largely guided our reflections and suggested the composition of the gardens.
The memory of the stay of Louis Feuillée, a pupil in this Convent who became the botanist of Louis XIV, invites to the pleasures of botany: the project exposes a plant palette on the themes of perfumes, aromatics, medicine and bouquets.
More generally, the garden project deals with plants staging, their environments and the broader question of the living and echoes the action of the nearby Salagon Garden and the work of Pierre Lieutaghi, ethnobotanist, who died in Mane on 14/11/2023.
Abandoning the usual decorative codes of gardens, the project tells a geography, a terroir, a knowledge, while developing rich and varied atmospheres.
Architecture offices involved in the design: ON (lighting designer), De Planta (architects)
Location: Chemin du Roucas, 04300 Mane, France.
Design year: 2021 – 2022
Year Completed: 2023
