Jardin de la Connaissance by Rodney LaTourelle
and 100 Landschaftsarchitektur

12 August 2010

   

Mushrooms grow on decaying books at this garden in Quebec by Berlin landscape architect Thilo Folkerts of 100 Landschaftsarchitektur and Canadian artist Rodney LaTourelle.

Called Jardin de la Connaissance, the installation is part of the International Festival des Jardins de Metis, which continues until October.

The books are piled up to form walls, rooms and seats, and partially submerged in the earth to become flooring.

Eight varieties of mushroom are cultivated on selected books, speeding their decay into the landscape.

Here’s some more information from Folkerts:

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100Landschaftsarchitektur Thilo Folkerts, Rodney LaTourelle, Berlin

Jardin de la Connaissance, Metis (CA), 2010

International Festival des Jardins de Metis (Quebec), Canada

By introducing the book as a material in the formation of spatial elements within the landscape, Jardin de la Connaissance offers an evocative cultural frame to examine transformational processes inherent in the nature of the forest. Walls, benches and floors made of used books structure a series of rooms at once framing and dissolving into their environment.

Invoking the mythic relation between knowledge and nature integral to the concept of ‘paradise’, we invite the emotional involvement of the visitor by exposing these fragile and supposedly timeless cultural artefacts to the processes of decomposition.

The decaying books are organized between structural coloured plates, while their deterioration is further stimulated and accentuated by varieties of mushrooms that will be cultivated on selected editions. The garden becomes a sensual reading room; a library; an information platform; an invitation to a provocative realm of knowledge.

Thilo Folkerts is a landscape architect, teacher, writer and gardener. He founded the office 100Landschaftsarchitektur in Berlin in 2007. He has realized temporary and permanent gardens all over Europe. Rodney LaTourelle is a Canadian artist, writer and designer, based in Berlin.

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His artistic approach is informed by his education in architecture and landscape architecture. His site-specific installations have been exhibited internationally. They have worked together on this project that revitalizes the notion of gardening as an art form.

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Garden site: ca. 250 m2

ca. 40.000 books = 30-40 tons

Mushrooms:
Coprinus comatus (Shaggy Mane).
Grifola frondosa (Hen of the Woods, Maitake).
Pleurotus citrinopileatus (Yellow Oyster).
Pleurotus columbinus (Blue Oyster).
Pleurotus djamor (Pink Oyster).
Pleurotus ostreatus (Pearl Oyster).
Pleurotus pulmonarius ((Phoenix) Indian Oyster).
Stropharia rugoso-annulata (Wine Cap)