Transform La Défense into the world’s leading “post-carbon” business district by 2030. This 5-hectare urban park project aims to halve the greenhouse gas emissions of this district of high-rise buildings. offices located west of Paris. Today, 35% of the pedestrian area of the business district, 600 m long, is vegetated. With this project designed by the landscape architect Michel Desvigne, the objective is to increase this share to 60% of the esplanade, according to the general manager of Paris La Défense, Pierre-Yves Guice.
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«The idea is to keep the consistency of Dan Kiley’s original project imagined in 1972 by adding layers of vegetation to make it a vast park on slabs“said the landscaper. For the LR president of the Hauts-de-Seine department, which finances the project, Georges Siffredi, “the mineral square will undergo a radical change“because this”concrete slab will give way to islands of green and freshness».
Changing the daily life of users
The esplanade was built on the works of the RER A, line 1 of the metro and the A14 motorway. Between the Agam (in the center of the esplanade) and Takis (bottom) basins and at the foot of the 450 plane trees planted fifty years ago, “intermediate strata” will be created with mid-height trees, large flowerbeds of plants, lawn, shrubs or hedges. “We want to reveal a totally unknown garden in the Paris region, which remains faithful to Dan Kiley and the classic French gardens“, detailed the landscaper Michel Desvigne, who did not “not oriented towards an urban forest“with tall trees to not”not obscure the space and the entire frame», the towers of the business district.
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This garden will be located in the historical axis traced by the gardener of Louis XIV, André Le Nôtre, with the two other emblematic gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs-Élysées. From 2024, the project “historic and which will considerably change the daily lives of users“, i.e. the 180,000 employees and 42,000 inhabitants, will be “delivered in sequencesby 2026, said CEO Pierre-Yves Guice.