Plage de la Défense

Client: Paris La Défense / Clément Willemin – base mandataire + Explorations + ON + Nadine Schütz + SOGETI La Défense / 12 M€ / 2,5 ha / 2021

Covering 2.5 hectares of public space at the exact barycentre of Europe’s largest business district, Place de la Défense is crossed every day of the week by 20,000 people. This project of public space entirely on slab, initially undertaken by Paris la Défense following infiltration problems, finally gives rise to a total reconfiguration of space, circulation and uses.

The story that the project tells is one questioning the “nature of the slab”, of its physiognomy and evolution. This questioning takes the form of a garden that is a delicate arrangement of museum pieces, plants, a blade of water, of lines and curves, of surfaces and resonances, of visual and acoustic reflections. It seeks to reveal the incessant theatre of the characters who inhabit and cross it. We want to offer at the Place de la Défense a sensual and organic dimension, the softness of a landscape. It is not an urban or architectural composition, but rather a stylised arrangement, a work of ensemble aimed to integrate the existing sculptural elements, designed in the twentieth century by Calder, Mirò, Aillaud, Rie and O’Loughlin in what could be a very large, contemporary, aquatic and sound sentient, open and mineral, warm and welcoming garden.