PLACES THAT CREATE LINKS // LINKS THAT CREATE PLACES

For Ateliers 2/3/4/ an intervention in a public space, in streets and squares or gardens and parks is first perceived as a whole, an intervention at the service of an overall, urban, landscape and architectural coherence.

The “free” space, whether public or private, must not be conceived either in strictly autonomous terms or as a “serving space”. Thus it becomes a programme in itself, and takes into account all the often contradictory expectations of all the desires expressed.

Even if the available space is tight, the approach of Ateliers 2/3/4/ will always be to try to make the world – or the garden which is always a small world in itself – bigger than it is, to dilate and extend it in the private plots and above all to create a “network” of these spaces. Creating continuities that are visual or water or plant-based but also continuities of paths and routes is one of the constant goals of our research.

 

In an increasingly urban society, whose environmental concerns and the need to “densify” are daily becoming more pressing, the question of public space and “nature in the city” appears all the more acute. But the public space, garden or square, cannot in our opinion be a mere outcome, a remainder, but on the contrary, must be a fact generating traces and links.

If today there is not a single urban project of any importance created without its “public square” and its “garden”, this is because these spaces constitute not only the catalyst of social bonding, but also an identity of their own, a representation of the neighbourhood itself.