The garden
DESIGNERS
From left to right: Chilpéric de Boiscuillé, Raphaëlle Chéré, Pauline Szwed and Benjamin Haupais
Chilpéric de Boiscuillé had hardly left the very demanding École Polytechnique [a Swiss higher education institution] in Lausanne when he was offered a job as an assistant lecturer at the Special Architectural School in Paris and a commission without a budget from the Psychiatric Clinic in Chailles (Loir-et-Cher). By associating his architect students with the project and then with his construction, and by using recovered materials, he was to give a new direction to his professional life, which would always combine teaching and construction, while keeping rigour and economy in mind. In 1993, he created the National Higher Institute for Nature and Landscape in Blois, at the request of Jack Lang, and he continually fought against the formalistic action of a certain conception of landscape in order to “conjure the meaning of the project up out of the land, after a diagnosis which is firstly sensitive and then scientific and technical”. In 2009, he founded SATIVA paysage Ltd, with some former landscape engineering students.
Raphaëlle Chéré is a landscape engineer who has had a diploma from the National Higher Institute for Nature and Landscape of Blois since 2007. She has developed a sensitive approach to spaces, with an attachment to a desire to create a feeling of bonding within the sustainable city and to put the user at the heart of the project. In particular, she has worked on inter-generational places (therapeutic garden, people-plant relationship) and has had work published on this subject several times. After spending two years at SETEC TPI, working as closely as possible with technical project management, she joined SATIVA paysage in 2009 to share a project approach which is humanist and pragmatic, but also full of fun and permanently in search of new ways of designing together. In 2010, with the SATIVA team, she created the “jardin migrateur” [migratory garden] within the framework of the national festival of young creation “Imaginez maintenant” [Imagine now] in the “hortillonnages” [marsh plots used for market gardening] of Amiens.
Pauline Szwed is a landscape engineer who has had a diploma from the National Higher Institute for Nature and Landscape of Blois since 2007. Her professional experiences in France, in teams of architects, town planners and engineers, and abroad in Canada, Peru, New Caledonia, Libya and China, enabled her to build a landscape project approach which is multidisciplinary, cultural and sensitive. She has also been involved in ephemeral garden projects and contributed to the creation of spatial installations for Montreal’s “Paysages éphémères” [Ephemeral landscapes] and the cultural event “Imaginez maintenant” [Imagine now] in the “hortillonnages” [marsh plots used for market gardening] of Amiens.
Benjamin Haupais is currently a student in his fourth year at the National Higher Institute for Nature and Landscape of Blois. The importance which the course gives to work placements has led him to work in some very different organisations: small French agencies in Vannes for four months, as well as in large Chinese organisations in Shenzhen for five months. By and large, he devotes his free time to extracurricular activities at the ENSNP through his active membership of the student association, the AEIP [Ingenious Association for Landscape Students]: managing / running the cafeteria, organising events, film club, preparing extracurricular trips, etc.
