Jardin de la Connaissance

For their contribution to the 11th International Garden Festival in Métis, Quebec, Berlin-based landscape architect Thilo Folkerts and artist Rodney Latourelle have taken 40,000 reclaimed books to create their own Jardin de la Connaissance (Garden of Knowledge). Aiming to utilise non-traditional materials to build their garden, the collaboration were concerned with focusing on “deconstruction and decay as opposed to blossoming and blooming.” By using books to collapse the binary between nature and culture, their installation mends this divide by returning paper to its environmental source. However, their clever take on horticulture also points to a sense of stasis by “planting” a garden that is unlikely to grow and will slowly deteriorate, as the books’ fragile pages face variations in the environment. I particularly love the concept of an exterior library and the choice to appropriate books – and thus words, ideas and knowledge – as the foundation for an alternative form of fleeting and mutable architecture.

The Garden Festival will be held until 3 October 2010.

FOUND VIA INHABITAT

Danica