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At last, here is the long-awaited book on the French works of Kathryn Gustafson.
Her professional experience and creative ability singles her out as one of the
most successful women landscape architects in the somewhat difficult French
professional market. The reason for this success lies in the fact that she has
always advocated a strong artistic stand throughout her work. Gustafson
distinguishes herself particularly in France as the practitioner that has forged
a strong and identifiable landscape style in the French corporate world over the
past decade. Her work blends sensual land forms with strong planting schemes
which result in an intricate and interwoven project. Kathryn Gustafson: Sculpting
the Land offers a brief summary of her career in the first section entitled
Portfolio, and then concentrates essentially on two of her major projects, which
are the Shell headquarters at Rueil Malmaison and the Rights of Man Square in the
new town of Evry.
The Shell project, completed in 1991, is probably the strongest and most
imageable of Gustafson's French works. It is a work of great sensuality that
manages to take advantage of the extraordinary technical difficulties and
constraints of the site. The project is essentially a vast roof garden since most
of the terrain is covered either by buildings or underground parking. The
entrance is orchestrated in a fine set of sequences that enhance subtle changes
in grade and the skillfull play of plant textures. The book is well-illustrated
and replete with interesting technical drawings showing some construction
details.
The Rights of Man Square in Evry is a project diametrically opposed to the
Shell project, both in its philosophy and usage. It is, therefore, interesting to
see them together in this book. The square is a beautifully detailed mineral
plaza with a variety of terraced levels. It is located at the heart of the new
town center of Evry. The space plays a pivotal role between the town hall and the
new cathedral. The dragon basin, which is the main artistic feature of the
square, is a wonderfully cubistic and outstretched metallic water ribbon that
contrasts in a playful and dislocated manner with the staunch symmetry of the
Mario Botta Cathedral. When visiting the place, I remember seeing a cortege of
nuns peacefully crossing the square amidst swarming teenage skateboarders,
without any apparent disturbance. This mix of peace and play reflects all the
sensitivity and skill that has been put into this project. It is almost as if the
space had been conceived to accommodate, simultaneously, many modes of existence.
The text, written by Leah Levy, could have drawn more substance from the
comparison between the two projects mentioned above. First of all, the difference
between a public space located in the difficult district of Evry and a corporate
space located in the exclusive suburb of Rueil, needs to be explicitly stated to
understand the change in plan, materials and detailing. Secondly it should have
been mentioned that the Rights of Man Square, despite its exceptional artistry,
is in line with French mainstream landscape practice of the past decade that has
essentially concentrated on the design of public open space, whereas the Shell
headquarters project, on the other hand, is exceptional in all respects, since
the idea of corporate landscape design á la française is a genre that
had not been truly recognized until now. Corporate design is also a domain in
which Gustafson has been clearly a leader and has acquired national recognition.
It is, therefore, no surprise that she has worked on several other large-scale
corporate projects such as the L'Oreal headquarters in Aulnay-sous-Bois and the
Esso/Exxon headquarters also located in Rueil Malmaison. The book should have
taken more advantage of the novelty of her work in this domain. We are
unfortunately left with very little information on all these other projects.
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There has been a decision to show several color pages of details of the Shell
and Rights of Man projects, but the consequence is that there is, unfortunately,
little room left to illustrate the personal creative process of Gustafson at
work. Why are all the exquisite sketches and working models that are the key to
her design secrets shown, at best, as small and rather insignificant vignettes?
It is also particularly sad that the correlation between the text on Gustafson's
work process and her drawings is not made more explicit in the book; particularly
when one knows about her background in fabric design at the F.I.T. in New York
and her subsequent studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage at
Versailles. This would probably have required a more personal and integrated
approach to Gustafson's artistic practice, which was probably not the goal of
this book.
It is interesting to note that most of Gustafson's French works deal with some
strong artistic statement. Her designs can be interpreted as surgical acts of
healing, where the land is skillfully draped and sown as if to hide past
torments. This particular attitude clearly makes Gustafson's work unique in
France. The landscape as art movement never really reached this country, and most
professionals would never think of themselves as artists, but simply as pragmatic
problem solvers in line with a particular urban tradition. Gustafson is,
therefore, definitely different from her peers in that her work appears each time
clearly as an artistic act. She prefers to work over disrupted terrain, where she
need not consider the notion of terroir or any other burdensome cultural referent
to place. Her conceptual and artistic approach sets her apart from the rest of
the French profession where the reference, not to say reverence, to place always
plays a key role. This does not in any way mean that her work is disrespectful of
the sites on which she intervenes, but there is clearly a priority given to an
idea statement about the land. This is probably why most of her projects deal
with sites that have been overwhelmingly disturbed and where a return to a
historical referent is often quite impossible. This is the case, for instance,
for the Morbras storm reservoir where Gustafson has built a very personal work of
land art in the heart of the French rural landscape.
The overall impression of the book is that the text reads well, but lacks
strong correlation with the images. There is also at times an obtuse use of
jargon and superlatives, like the term "planar three dimensionality" which
completely escapes my own Cartesian understanding of things, or a remark about
Gustafson's work that "contains a dichotomy of the bucolic and the unexpected".
The text should have taken more from the drawings and working process of
Gustafson, without necessarily delving into new age intellectualism. The
reference to her past experience in textiles could have been an interesting
thread to follow, since the notion of landscape drapery appears clearly as a
recurrent theme throughout her work.
This is a first attempt at a book on the works of Gustafson which in itself is
commendable. I am sure that there will be more writings that will focus more
particularly on her specific design philosophy and artistic approach. It would
probably have helped the reader to situate the French context and to distinguish
between the person and the work a little more. Since Gustafson has now left
France and moved her offices back to the United States and England, it will be
interesting to see how much the change of culture and context really affects her
creative work. I believe that it will remain consistent with her own artistic
beliefs and will continue to make waves across the land.
Christophe Girot is director of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du
Paysage at Versailles and is a practicing landscape architect in France.
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