Folds works above all as sculpture-play-scape. While the design tools are simple, they offer a layered complexity within this simplicity, so as to cater for various uses. The play of shapes, levels and morphology makes it interesting to the various age groups of the nearby kindergarten as well as children from the area. The project is about the play between two materials which reflects geological processes that formed the Jura Mountains. In this way it establishes a unique and strong visual language and an engaging playground. On a larger scale it enriches the well-known modernist design approach of the surrounding residential area; the contrast between the orthogonal housing and more nature-inspired landscape forms.
- from the award statements
The Fold’s childhood is a sculpture-landscape, monumental and elongated in the land of the place called Boudines. It takes part to a surface of soil of 2600m². Its forms are an interpretation of the force that spawned landscapes of the Jura massif (Jura folds). Meeting of 2 formal systems: In the orthogonal landscape of Meyrin-park and near the flat facades of the École des Boudines, sculpture-landscape emerges in curves and volumes. It is a response to the principle of tabula rasa, to the deliberate ignorance of the pre-existing landscape that presided over the realization of Meyrin-park. Within the modern “radical” city, the artistic project inscribes a set of differentiated forms, extraordinary in the context of the orthonormal city.
The return of the topographical plot: The formal system of sculpture freely develops its dynamic undulations in the ground of the exterior spaces of the École des Boudines, freed from the relentless formal system of the straight lines of Meyrin-park. Games of space and time: From the heights, one can see the Fold’s childhood as a picture evocative of the folded and undulating landscapes of the Jura, a model imaginary site of the mountains lying. It is a set of shapes that can also be traveled, paced. The spatiality of the fold offers the children a physical experience of the curve and a variety of situation differentiated in the space of the pleated floor. From the near to the far, from the fold of the curve to the stretched line of the architectural horizon, the bodies and the eyes of the children find articulations, enter into a new relation with the immensity of the sky of MEYRIN-PARC, Beyond the valley of Geneva and the massifs of the Jura
Art and landscape – The fold’s childhood is a work of art carved in the field of Meyrin-park. Located between the park and the buildings, between architecture and landscape, it questions the status of art in public space and landscape as a work of art. Designed with the tools of the landscaper, the work implicitly poses the question of the part of creation that can involve the profession of landscaper. Is the landscape architect an artist?
The nature of the commands does not automatically imply the design of a space under the sky – arrangement – as an act of creation. The double status of Gilles Brusset, directing a landscape agency as a parallel of his artistic activity, makes it possible to conceive the conception of landscapes as acts of creation and the conception of works of art as landscapes.
The site involved – The principle of the sculpture-landscape of the fold’s childhood is that of the inscription of one landscape in another. On the one hand, the site is involved in its physical physical dimension, and on the other hand in its geographical dimension at the territorial scale. Existing site features (straight lines) are exacerbated by the contrasting effect of the inscription of the sculpture-landscape (curves).
Art and civil engineering – The diversion of ordinary materials from roads and expressways to the benefit of a garden work of art has led to the appearance of extraordinary forms in the daily space.
Name of the project: “L’enfance du pli” (“Fold’s childhood”)
Project category: schools and playgrounds
Role of the entrant in the project: artist landscape architect
Other designers involved in the design of landscape (if any): –
Project location: Rue des Boudines, 2, Meyrin, Suisse
Design year: 2014
Year Built: 2017