NIEL Garden in Toulouse by Michèle & Miquel

Description of project by Michèle & Miquel

The Niel barracks was a military enclosure built at the end of the XIX Century around a large square of arms of 220m x 90m.

In an urban operation of reconversion of the place in houses and equipment, Michele & Miquel are in charge of transforming the old parade ground into a park.

Due to the presence of archaeological remains of the Roman era, no excavation of more than 40cm in depth was authorized. At the same time, the town hall wanted a garden with trees and vegetation.

The solution adopted consisted in raising the ground and creating a new topography using the earth extracted in the excavation of the basements of the adjoining buildings. The topography accentuates the relief and evokes the landscape of hills of the Toulousaine region, Lauragais or Volvestre.

This relief is installed on the old parade ground, as if a veil covered the archaeological site and allows the planting of trees, creating an oasis of vegetation in the central part of the garden.

Faced with the classicism of the original composition of the enclosure, the new topography brings a disorder that, while conserving the view towards the Etat Major building, adds new horizons that overlap and vary when wandering.

The garden is complex in a sum of different places and environments formed by hills, roads, trees and large esplanades, all suitable for different activities: children's play areas, slides installed on the slopes, spaces for rest and stroll, meeting or for the show.

The pavement, completely permeable, has been made with large "carpets" arranged in strips of 1m wide by 10m long, parallel to the facades of the old military buildings. Formed by ceramic pieces of 30 x 5 x 6cm -dimension of the traditional toulousaine brick- "woven" to a metal mesh with galvanized steel wire. It is the adaptation of the patented system called Flexbrick. Thanks to the flexibility of this mesh, the whole can be deformed and adapt perfectly to the undulations of the terrain.

The matrix of the mesh allows to play with the density of the ceramic pieces, leaving "random" gaps at the ends and thus achieve a diffuse transition between the pavement and the grass. There are no limits or edges in the changes of matter:

- Roads wander and merge with the hills as, little by little, the grass appears between the ceramic pieces.
- The large pond is a surface of water that fills a slight concavity of the ground.

The Niel garden manages to be a dynamic space, with multiple environments under the same language. A language guided by the topography and the material that merge into a single intervention where everything seems obvious.