Coloco & Gilles Clément

Gilles Clément (1943, Creuse, France) is a contemporary landscape designer and philosopher, lecturer at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, and writer. His theories and works (such as Parc André Citroën and Musée du Quai Branly, both in Paris) have influenced an entire generation of European landscape designers, shifting the focus from aesthetic to humanistic ecology and biodiversity. Clément’s publications include: Le jardin en movement (1991), Le jardin planétaire (1999), and Manifeste du tiers-paysage (2004). The basis of the Manifesta 12 curatorial concept is inspired by Clément’s “The Planetary Garden,” a book highlighting the increasingly relevant metaphor of the planet as garden and the need for humans to care for our spaces.

Coloco is a multidisciplinary design studio with locations in Paris and Montpellier.

The studio was founded by the landscape designer Miguel Georgieff and architects Pablo Georgieff and Nicolas Bonnenfant. Since 1999, Coloco has developed urban and landscape design projects, through both collective and direct interventions.

Coloco and Clément’s project presented at Manifesta 12, Becoming Garden, is a program of meetings, workshops, and guided tours, to establish an ecological relationship of active exchange between citizens, gardens, and nature, and to develop collective thoughts that respond to a contemporary urgency to care for our own spaces. Each participant becomes a landscaper-gardener of space, and experiences the creation of favorable soil fertility conditions, reduction of waste of materials, and conservation of existing biodiversity. Part of the project will include the creation of a garden in the ZEN district, transforming abandoned land into living space.