Critic's Choice Poor presentation lets down a book about an inspirational 'gardener', says Andrew Mead

摘要

Gilles Clement, who describes himself as 'a gardener and writer', made his name as one of the design team for Pare Andre Citroen on the outskirts of Paris in the early 1990s. Subsequent projects in his native France include two more gardens in the capital: one in the vicinity of Johann Otto von Spreckelsen's Grande Arche at La Defense, which colonises wasteland created by aborted construction schemes (see below), and the other for Jean Nouvel's Quai Branly Museum. A monograph in English on his work is overdue and Planetary Gardens: The Landscape Architecture of Gilles Clement (Birkhauser, ￡46.90) fills the gap - though not quite as convincingly as it should. What Clement seeks is the antithesis of the bland formalism that seems to be the corporate norm when it comes to landscape design -solutions plucked from a catalogue with little reference to site.