The International Garden Festival is pleased to unveil the names of the new designers and their gardens chosen for the 21st edition of the Festival. Five new projects from South Korea, France, Montreal and Toronto have been selected to be featured at the 2020 edition of the International Garden Festival.
The new gardens will be on exhibit at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens from Saturday, June 20 to Sunday, October 4, 2020. For its 21st edition, visitors will enjoy more than 25 gardens, each one pushing the frontiers of contemporary design and offering a unique mix of curated environments, natural experiences, horticultural staging and human creativity.
Métissages is the theme for the 21st edition and the new installations offer hybrids of colours and textures drawn from marine life, the environment and cultures from around the world. Continuing the exploration of new ideas and emerging practices, the Festival connects designers from various fields to favour the crossbreeding of disciplines to offer visitors explorations of new territories.
Cross-breeding in the context of contemporary gardens can be of practices (landscape architecture, garden design, architecture, visual arts, industrial design, cuisine and other fields of creative expression), plants (native or exotic) and materials (natural and manufactured). This mixity of approaches enriches and excites, creating new opportunities for exploration.
Five New Gardens to be Experienced This Summer
Five new gardens were chosen by the jury from among the 200 projects submitted following an international call for proposals that attracted proposals from designers from 38 countries:
Augmented Grounds
by Soomeen Hahm, Architect, Jaeheon Jung, Architect and Yumi Lee, Landscape Architect – Seoul (South Korea)
Augmented Grounds is inspired by the traditional sash of the Métis nation of the Western Plains. The garden represents harmony through colourful ropes that are tightly laid on top of sculpted terrain. The garden is made possible by using smart construction technology that uses augmented reality for its layout and installation.
Corps de résonance
by Charlotte Barbeau, Designer, Leila Desrosiers, Designer, Félix Roy, Environmental Designer and Jean-Benoit Trudelle, Architect – Montreal (Quebec) Canada
Corps de résonance is a musical folly that takes form in a forest glade. Visitors move in and around this giant instrument that comes to life in the playing, vibrating along with the sounds of the forest.
ENTWINE
by Waiyee Chou, Landscape Architect and Carlos Portillo, Landscape Architect – Toronto (Ontario) and Montreal (Quebec) Canada
ENTWINE incorporates the ancient knot-tying technique of Macramé to highlight the varieties of plants hybridized for horticulture. Inside a spiral, visitors are free to wander between suspended vessels and become entwined with the structure’s cords.
Forêt corallienne
Lucie Bulot, Architect and Dylan Collins, Architect – Montreal (Quebec) Canada
Forêt corallienne is a coral forest of a different kind. A community of limestone creatures takes root in the forest, a métissage of colour and form that creates an unusual landscape and a new hybrid world.
(Mé)Tissages
by Duke Truong, Architect – Strasbourg (France)
(Mé)Tissages is a woven landscape that invites visitors to enter through layers of elastic elements into a space created by the weaving of various elements. This experimental garden unites visitors through a shared experience of an installation that combines architecture and nature. (Mé)Tissages is also an invitation to question the links between communities. Visitors discover a multiplicity of landscapes that resonate as visitors explore and read between the lines.
Two projects received a special mention from the jury:
Entre vents et marées by Emmanuelle Loslier, Landscape Architect and Camille Zaroubi, Landscape Architect – Montreal (Quebec) Canada
Zoétrope métis – by Sami Tannoury, Architect – Montreal (Quebec) Canada
The jury was composed of:
- Sophie Beaudoin, Associate Landscape Architect, Claude Cormier + Associés Architecture de paysage et Design urbain
- Lise Gagné, Architect, Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Garden Festival
- Michael Jemtrud, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, McGill University
- François Leblanc, Technical Coordinator, International Garden Festival
- Kim Pariseau, Architect, Appareil Architecture
- Alexander Reford, Director, International Garden Festival
