Introduction
the oriental influence upon European design, repre-
sented in the eighteenth century by the passion for
chinoiserie and more recently by the influence of
traditional Japanese design upon twentieth-century
Modernists and Minimalists.
From the case studies gathered here, it seems that
the places to which European designers have been
looking most recently for their inspiration have been
Spain and France, or perhaps, more specifically,
Barcelona and Paris.
Following the establishment of democracy in Spain,
the municipal authorities in Barcelona sought to
revive the city’s civic life through a programme of
new public spaces, an initiative given additional
emphasis by preparations for the Olympic Games
in 1992. It was a programme that was admired and
envied by civic leaders, designers and planners
throughout Europe.
The spotlight then turned upon Paris, where the
French government had, in 1982, proclaimed a com-
petition for a new urban park for the twenty-first
century, to be built on the site of a former cattle
market at La Villette. The competition was won by
Bernard Tschumi, a Swiss-born architect practising
and teaching in New York. Tschumi’s design was
controversial, since it set its face against both the
pleasurable presumptions of the picturesque and
the social worth and utility of Modernism. It seemed
to be, at one and the same time, both mechanical
and mad, yet it certainly fulfilled the government’s
desire for a prominent cultural statement.Although Tschumi claimed to be celebrating disjunc-
tion and folly, the Parc de la Villette collaged and
collided three very ordered systems, a grid of bright
redfolies, a system of spaces based on simple geo-
metrical shapes, and a path system which includ-
ed dead-straight covered walkways. Despite its
author’s deconstructivist rhetoric, both Descartes
and Le Nôtre contributed something to its design.
A spate of significant parks soon followed. There
was the Parc Citroën (opened in 1992), by Allain
Provost and Gilles Clément, where the revival of
seventeenth-century geometries is plain to see, its
plan echoing the layout of Louis XIV’s great gardens
at Marly, and Provost’s Parc Diderot at La Defense
(also 1992), where neatly trimmed box hedging and
a sculptural slate cascade swoop in waves down a
hillside, another design that might please the spirit
of the Sun King. Soon major commissions through-
out Europe seemed to be tumbling into the hands of
French designers, not just the Landscape Park Reim
discussed in this volume, but also two of the most
notable projects in London, Allain Provost’s Thames
Barrier Park (completed 2000) and Desvigne +
Dalnoky’s plan for Greenwich Peninsula.