The International Garden Festival has announced the names of the designers selected by the jury for the 15th edition of the Festival presented at the Reford Gardens from June 28 to September 28, 2014. The competition attracted 293 proposals for contemporary gardens submitted by over 700 architects, landscape architects, designers and artists from 35 countries.
The jury of the 2014 edition was composed of Denis Boucher, chargé de projet, Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec; Cécile Combelle, architect with Atelier Barda and designer of the Sacré potager garden for the 2013 edition of the Festival; Vincent Lemay, landscape architect; Matei Paquin, project development director of Moment Factory; Ann Webb, past executive director and publisher, Canadian Art Foundation; and Alexander Reford, director of Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens and the International Garden Festival.
The six new projects selected to be featured at the 2014 edition are by designers from Canada, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the United States.
Afterburn by CIVILIAN PROJECTS [Ksenia Kagner and Nicko Elliott], a Montreal-bred, Brooklyn-based art and architecture practice with an emphasis on the social potential of landscape and materiality. Afterburn emulates a post-apocalyptic experience that allows visitors to see how nature renews by itself after a fire and how she manages to heal damaged landscapes.
Cone Garden by LIVESCAPE (architect and landscape architect Seungjong Yoo, landscape architect Byoungjoon Kim, botanist Hyeryoung Cho, landscape designers Yongchul Cho, Iltae Jeong, Jinhwan Kim and Soojung Yoon) and media artist Byoungjoon Kwon, from Seoul, South Korea. The garden is a pop-up garden made of orange construction cones – iconic symbols of job sites and the never-ending construction, de-construction and re-construction of our environment. They will become planters, seats and cones that transmit messages to passers-by and visitors.
Line Garden by Canadian artist/designers Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster who are based in Basel, Switzerland. Their contemporary labyrinth is created from security tapes closely ordered in the natural environment, providing new perspectives on the environment when visitors enter and inhabit the space.
Méristème by CHÂSSI (designers Caroline Magar, Marie-Josée Gagnon and François Leblanc) from Montreal, Quebec. This is a macroscopic structural representation of plant cell system reminds us of the significant role of plant biodiversity to ensure the future of human society.
Orange Secret by NOMAD STUDIO (landscape architect and urban designer William E. Roberts and agricultural engineer and landscape architect Laura Santin) from New York. Orange Secret plays with the perception and the way we respond around enclosed areas. It explores the orange dimension of the garden by isolating this visual characteristic from numerous stimuli that complete the perception through our senses.
Rotunda by CITYLABORATORY (architects Aurora Armental Ruiz and Stefano Ciurlo Walker) from Santiago de Compostela, Spain. This project is a basin-shaped rotunda that accumulates daily pollen and leaves that serve as food for birds and insects, which leads to the development of a new life in the garden.
Two projects received special mentions from the jury: Bal à la Villa by landscape architects Annie Ypperciel and Robert Desjardins from Montreal; and sPOTs by architects Roy Talmon and Noa Biran (Talmon Biran architecture studio) from Tel Aviv, IsraeI.
The International Garden Festival is the leading contemporary garden festival in North America. Presented at Les Jardins de Métis, at the gateway of the Gaspé Peninsula, the Festival is held on a site adjacent to the historic gardens created by Elsie Reford, thereby establishing a bridge between history and modernity, and a dialogue between conservation, tradition and innovation. Each year the Festival exhibits conceptual gardens created by more than sixty architects, landscape architects and designers from various disciplines in a natural environment on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Since its inception in 2000, more than 140 gardens have been exhibited at Grand-Métis and as extra-mural projects in Canada and around the world.
Cultural space and tourist destination for over 50 years, the Reford Gardens is one of the most popular attractions in eastern Quebec, providing visitors experiences for every sense. A National Historic Site, the historic gardens and Estevan Lodge were recently designated heritage site by the Québec government. They will be open every day, from May 31 to September 28, 2014. For more information, please visit www.refordgardens.com.