The Air Liquide site is part of the historical geography of the Saclay plateau, which used to supply water to the gardens of Versailles by conveying its flow of rainwater via the nearby Buc aqueduct. In the 18^th century, the Versailles estate became a focal point for world botanical research, especially with the Jussieu dynasty. While it is a relatively recent creation (the 60s), the park in Air Liquide’s property is a living testimonial of those plants which were brought back in the luggage of travelling botanists and of their horticultural creations (Atlas cedars, Canadian thujas, purple beeches side by side with common ash, oaks, maple trees, plane trees, chestnut trees etc.), and which symbolise the diverse origins of the company’s employees. This tree compilation will be sponsored on a worldwide scale by researchers hailing from across the globe who work at Air Liquide. In addition, botany has been an extraordinary source of inspiration for science, particularly the role of photosynthesis in gas transformation processes.
The landscaping project will introduce rainwater management, of the order of 4,000 cubic metres to be stored in clay soil, implying a composition that will take advantage of that constraint: forming pools and channels as a nod to the Versailles waterworks. The excavated earth, mostly containing clay and buhrstone, will largely be reused on site by building rammed earth walls and ledges covered in buhrstone cladding.
Lastly, the project will put the spotlight on the Air Liquide company’s special features, using powerful elements that can represent it throughout outdoor spaces:

• The company’s effective environmental awareness
• The company’s relation to air

The Kervidanou business estate was established alongside the RN165 expressway, a border between rural farmland and the entrance to the town of Quimperlé. It is broken down into four geographic sectors, one of which is devoted to retail. The spaces are shabby and unsuitable for mixed uses or purposes on account of their confined size. The landscaping project consisted in unifying the four sectors as well as the planned extension (about ten hectares) through a consistent and homogenous approach to signage, plantation schemes and continuous footpaths and bike lanes.
The landscaping has imposed a 50km/h speed limit, encouraging walking and cycling, which are the most likely means of fostering soft mobility.
The plantations separating the private plots help to homogenise a great variety of fences. Agreements were signed with the owners to grow climbing plants to adorn their wire fences.

Feedback (last visit in 2016)

• The project has experienced a number of trials and tribulations while being implemented, and municipalities changing their minds, all of which has led to substantial losses in consistency and in landscaping quality.
• There has been a lot of vandalism, even though nothing in the background situation could have caused us to expect it: broken trees, stolen plants, the “anonymous” spraying of chemical weed killer on certain plants, people failing to obey speed limits or one-way traffic and causing accidents, etc.
• Significant damage was caused to perennial plants by rabbits who eat the sprouts and by seagulls who use clumps of roots to build their nests.
• Coloured asphalt is too delicate to lay down and cannot be duplicated during repairs.
• There is a major problem with the regeneration of shrub plantations, and we are unable to determine the cause despite the investigations that were performed.
• Here’s hoping that despite this detrimental climate, an optimistic future will take over once again!

This project is part of the development of the R&D centre in the huge, totally artificial industrial estate surrounding the airport. The building plot is one of the rare planted areas within the sector. The project strategy is focused on substantial tree-planting, in a bid to compensate, as much as possible, for the required felling, and to recreate a “semi-wild” area that is more of a bushland than a garden.
Plantation will occur in the vicinity of the building and on the rooftop, sloping from the ground to the ridge of the machine house. This will result in a genuine artificial “hill” where the project will produce a botanical gradient combining spruce groves and bushland.
The palette will feature a xerophile Mediterranean flowering procession, typical of bushland and suitable where water is scarce. Only the rooftop will have an integrated watering system.

The water treatment plant is located on the edge of the built-up area of Perros-Guirec, within a rural setting which still shows a strong wooded countryside character.
The project to reassemble the space intends to stage the engineering facilities and their highly spectacular dimensions, as well as the reappearance of the clean treated water as it is returned to the natural stream running through the site. To that end, the stream is being returned to the open air and its path is being highlighted by the use of pink granite blockfield. The treated water reappears as a waterfall, also made of pink granite blockfield. The vicinity of the structures is highlighted by technical zones made of crushed pink granite, while the vast grassy expanses are managed as extensive prairies. An educational trail is being created for visitors. It will review the various phases in the water treatment process, and in so doing will include the various facilities. The site will remain enclosed, with the hedges and shrubs reassembled all around the plot. Inside the site, a few trees are there to accentuate the space, like the tall Monterey pine trees that one can also see on the nearby coast.

The Kérantour craftworks business estate in Pleudaniel went through a strictly minimal initial preparation phase regarding two sectors separated by a very touristy county road. The project consisted in overhauling the previously-completed sector and to provide an extension in keeping with the whole. Quality work was of particular importance in this project, since the estate is located very close to a tourist information kiosk devoted to the Lézardrieux peninsula,
We produced a powerful landscaped image, serving as a signal commensurate with the entire region, by using a pine tree plantation as an early expression of the coastal ambience, showing towering, relatively transparent silhouettes that grow very fast. They are mainly planted in the non-constructible buffer strip that runs alongside the county highway, and occasionally planted in private plots. Most of the backfill from excavations performed when preparing the site will ultimately be reused for the pine trees and their undergrowth.
Internal thoroughfares were modified by dealing with the partitioning fences in a homogenous manner, using deciduous flowering trees (elderberry trees, wild cherry trees) in a design inspired by the surrounding banks that are covered in hedges and shrubs. Signage was deployed at the entrances to the site and to the plots.

Feedback (last visit in 2016)

• Overall, the landscaping is “aging well”, and almost all plots in the northern part have been taken. The long expected extension to the southern part was never completed.
• The wooded countryside plantations have settled well except for the modification to the south as a result of lack of space.
• A few of the pine trees are lying down. We have observed that they were cut at their base. Very strange…
• Some support stakes have not yet been removed!
• A few slats bearing the plot number and company name have been affixed to the poles at the entrance, despite the fact that the initial signage worked fine with the plot numbers!