The port of Cordemais is part of the “Water and Landscapes” project aimed at the planning and development of the public and landscape spaces of six sites across the greater Nantes St. Nazaire estuary area. The strategic, localized, and coordinated interventions that make up the project have as their objective the creation of a communal cultural and landscape identity, recognizable at a metropolitan scale.

Located along a short canal running parallel to the Loire river, half-way between Nantes and St. Nazaire, the port of Cordemais rests in the heart of an alluvial and marshy landscape, which has been developed even less due to the heavy presence of industry. The imposing hydroelectric plant, standing in isolation along the facing arm of land, obscures views of the river. This site provides a key setting for the creation of an intermediary public space, one which strollers can utilize, made up of a new presence of nature, in complement to the Loirestua pedagogical discovery center.

The proposed development is simple and economical. An entirely mineral quay bordering the canal leads on one side to a parking area concealed beneath new plantings, and on the other side towards a park that opens onto the wider landscape. The existing layer of trees in the park is thinned out, and completed with uncut hedges. To the north, the tree area is thickened alongside an old gravel pit. A large meadow opens onto the Loire, creating a public space organized around five bodies of water, each of which helps maintain a separate garden.

These very stripped down and almost abstract circular spaces measure themselves, in a classic play of perspective, with the wider landscape. By turns botanical, environmental, experimental, aesthetic, playful, these spaces are dedicated to pedagogy, to observation, and to understanding the dynamics of the Estuary, and are intended for use by a large public. They reflect the spectacular dimension of the water and the sky. They function as a receptacle of local biological resources, and evoke some of the problematic issues tied to the river (flooding and rises in the water level). Where the park ends, a footbridge crosses the canal. In bypassing the factory, the path leads around to the point of the island where one can enjoy and contemplate the river.