#Urban GardensEndymion, The myth of the ideal garden.
The urban garden Endymion stems from the ambition to create a space capable of offering a synesthetic experience which, by definition, involves different sensations. The installation is therefore composed of essential elements and minimal interventions. Three objects accompany and complete the Endymion planted garden, which can be reinterpreted as an allegory of the Greek myth of man’s quest for the ideal garden. Based on the history of the site, each object represents a different way of inhabiting space:
The flag – the wind: Studio SNCDA has come up with an oversized flag to transform the former Place d’Armes into an ‘urban square’ and draw attention to the garden. The flag’s distinctive silvery material gives the impression of molten metal, reinforcing the charge of light in the garden.
The fireplace – the fire: The fire is a warm shelter around which you can protect yourself, in contact with the embers. The contemplation of the flames gives rise to moments of exchange and collective reverie.
The fountain – water: Water flows down the slope of a pipe and collects in a basin. Its surface reflects the landscape and serves both as a drinking trough and a playground.
Endymion, like all the other LUGA gardens, has been designed with the circular economy in mind and, after the LUGA event, it is planned to dismantle and rebuild the objects in another location.
The group brings together the sensitivities and approaches that Studio SNCDA and Jan Minne develop in relation to a site of intervention. Their collaboration is an opportunity to reflect on and experiment with space and the way it is inhabited, as well as the landscape, approached through the idea of the garden – hortus conclusus – an archetypal and ideal place.
Studio SNCDA is an architecture and scenography agency founded by Sara Noel Costa de Araujo in 2014. SNCDA deploys its energy and strength in a quest for renewal by questioning the civic role of architecture in its landscape. Through projects of different scales and forms, both real and theoretical, made of bricks or on paper, it experiments through agency research, curation and the design of exhibition architectures. The agency develops, designs, constructs and makes buildings, public spaces and furniture, with the aim of fostering an ambitious, generous and inclusive conception of the world.
Jan Minne began working as a garden and landscape designer in Brussels in 2005. During his travels, he developed a great passion for the enormous wealth of plants he discovered both in nature and in botanical collections and gardens. As a self-taught gardener, he has acquired an in-depth knowledge of botany and the history of gardens and garden architecture which form the basis of his work.
In the context of the climate crisis and ecological transition, the garden highlights an alternative way of managing resources and plantations, and questions the status of the land and the relationship that architecture and housing have with nature and the landscape. New periods of drought are leading to the creation of dry gardens where traditional green lawns once reigned. The garden is conceived as a constellation of allelopathic and aromatic plants, organised heterogeneously into specific plant communities/families, which, planted together, contribute to the balance of the garden itself and require little maintenance. The study and choice of plants stem from the need to have a garden that retains a certain tone of colour and can function both day and night.
Mixture of earth and pozzolan (ground), combination of different metal objects.
Family of allelopathic plants: Euphorbia, Artemisia, Salvia, Phlomis, Cytisus, Thymus, Santolina, Achillea, Cortaderia, Calamagrostis and Eryngium.