The experiments with woodlands led by the Alnarp Landscape Lab is what I have always wanted to do: variations on textures and densities, dialog between geometrical order and measured randomness, play with time alterations, composition of a forest miniature…

As landscape architect, I have been realizing such experiments when opportunities arose. Their aesthetics were so far from the expected stereotypes, that it has sometimes been done almost clandestinely. These miniature forest realizations are thus dispersed, atomized in time and space.

I discovered the work of the Alnarp Landscape Lab in 2014, during a lecture by Mr. Gustavson, organized by Dorothée Imbert at the Knowlton School (Columbus, Ohio, US). This has been a shock for me: all my attempts, my dreams were gathered in one place, in a magnificent didactic mosaic, a sort of living library.

Later, the visit of Alnarp sites with Mr. Gustavson and some actors of the university was very exciting. I had to take the measure of the pedagogical character of such a work: to physically experience the space, the transparencies, the light, the colors, the catch in the wind of these prototypes, is formative like nothing else. Above all, being able to compare and calibrate them is unique.

I have the opportunity to help guide the development of the campus. It is an honor that delights me.

Michel Desvigne