Jardin Jules Guesde, Alfortville
1998-2000
Alfortville sits at the confluence of the Marne and the Seine rivers, three kilometers upstream from Paris. During the past 40 years it has been redeveloped for social housing. The garden Jules Guesde site is a leftover scrap of land between the new 10-15 storey housing blocks that overlook it. The two main challenges to this garden were the necessity to provide a large circulation path that allows access from the housing projects to the street and to compensate the immense difference in scale between the pedestrian areas and the towering buildings. It also had to provide an appropriate profile for flood control. The project uses the large mounds of earth that had to be displaced for the building foundations, creating an intimate urban space around a path. The hills are planted densely with 150 trees, conveying an exotic sense to the local neighborhood.