A place for experimentation and validation for future public spaces of the Ecole Polytechnique neighbourhood

This test garden made it possible to experiment with plant structures, select and validate materials (edging, road crossings, various protective measures, rainwater harvesting methods, planting alignments). To be significant, these prototypes should be of considerable size. The idea is to take advantage of this opportunity, assembling these experiments into a kind of place. A place where all project components can be demonstrated, and where all the deciders and actors involved in these neighborhoods are given access. From this idea, the concept of a test garden quickly appeared. It was necessary to find a terrain that wouldn’t divided up in mortgage by future constructions, and whose ground area was already managed by the public authorities. The future metro station square appeared as the appropriate site to host prefiguring the landscape elements of the future campus. The test garden, with its simple, clear architecture, evolved and transformed at a steady pace, as the trees in this nursery had to be transplanted frequently and the plants were used as and when public spaces were created. The test garden was a place of simple and readable architecture, precisely because its placement is conceived both within a large territory undergoing construction as well as within a large agricultural territory. The site evolves and transforms itself at a regular rhythm, trees frequently needing to be transplanted and plants being used as public spaces are developed. Ultimately, the garden gave way to the metro forecourt. Most of the elements were transplanted elsewhere, except for a certain number of plants had become permanent to the space.