The project approaches the challenges at play within the wider estuary of Nantes through intervention in six different sites. What meaning should be given to just a selection of a few fragments of a landscape? What amount of visibility should be given to these places and to the connections between them? How should they be governed? What amount of balance should be struck between artifice and nature, modernity and conservation? The fascinating nature of the commission comes from the fact that these six separate places need to be conceived of with the awareness of the landscape's entirety in mind, of its wider visibility and influence. In our proposal, we developed the concept of the “small park” in order to indicate a limited number of places in contrast to a “large park” which would indicate all the places together.

The challenge today lies in creating a constellation of places that succeeds in matching the scale of the estuary with all its particularities. Naturally, this involves revealing the specific and diverse features of the landscape, allowing them to be seen and understood. But there wouldn't be much sense in persisting solely in practices that have grown at times obsolete. More than just revealing the characteristics of the landscape, the process of transposing these qualities to the present in the service of new needs and in order to bring about transformation is required as well. One day this constellation of places could spread over the wider territory of the estuary, just as Julien Gracq writes, in describing city gardens, of an “explosive plant deflagration which, one day, will spread again over abandoned cities”. These little laboratories will perhaps produce solutions for the future, for we are convinced that the preservation and authenticity of the estuary comes about through its transformation.