Landscape, a Game between Nature and Culture – ‘Architecture in Motion’ Conferences

A graduated of the National School of Landscape in Versailles, Florence Mercier founded her agency in 1988. She works on different scales, from the garden to the territory, in France and abroad. Her reflection, built through contact with China and Japan, focuses on space and its relationship with its user, in search of answers to contemporary environmental issues. 

Her projects in France and China question the relationship between these two cultures in order to address contemporary environmental issues. How can we articulate, through landscape, the development of cities and the preservation of resources in a dialogue between city, water and nature? In France, among her numerous achievements of parks and gardens, we find the Waterfront Park, which is part of a wider effort to renovate the neighborhood, or the garden of the National Archives of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. In China, she designed the gardens of the French Embassy in Beijing and won in 2017 the project management of the ecological and landscaping urban project of the new Beicai in Shanghai. This project is paving the way for the creation of new ecological and “sponge city” models. 

From the scale of the garden to that of the territory, landscape is a notion that involves both space and the environment, but also the cultural and symbolic dimension of a place. Thus, Florence Mercier, through her projects, will show in this series of lectures how designing gardens and landscapes is based on a constant game, with crossing scales, between nature and culture. The gardens she creates also call for a staging of the space borrowed from the living arts by immersing the walker in a singular experience.

Dates and venues: March 26, 2019 at Institut français in Beijing (time: 7:30pm-9pm); March 28, 2019 at Chengdu Museum (time: 7pm-8:30 pm; address : 1 Xiaohe street, Qingyang district, Chengdu); March 30, 2019 at Elephant Art Center in Kunming (time: 3pm-4:40pm; address: Elephant Art Center, Wenhua Xiang 4-6 – in courtyard behind Mazagran-, Kunming);  March 31, 2019 at Times Museum in Guangzhou (time: 3:30pm-5:30pm; address: Times Museum, Times Rose Garden Phase III Huangbian North Road, N. Baiyun Avenue, Guangzhou 510440)
Organizers: France Embassy in China/ Institut français
Partners: Urban Environment Design magazine, Chengdu Museum, The Elephant Books, Times Museum
Speakers: in Beijing: Florence Mercier, landscaper, and Wang Xiangrong, Vice-Dean and Professor at the Beijing Forestry University, Vice-Dean of China Landscape Society; in Kunming: Florence Mercier, Landscaper, and Miss Lu Xiaoxuan, PhD student and lecturer at the Department of Landscape Design at the University of Hong Kong; in other cities: Florence Mercier, Landcaper
See full programme: in French; in Chinese
See useful links: https://www.faguowenhua.com/fr/event/architecture-en-mouvement-le-paysage-un-jeu-entre-nature-et-culture; UED live streaming for Florence Mercier’ Beijing conference on March 26: http://www.uedmagazine.net/UED_Content_Live_470_470_13216.html