Experiments in landscape architecture in 1970s France: The Cergy-Pontoise Recreational Park

Abstract Recreational parks, much like new towns, can be considered as ‘places of memory’. 1 They mark a complete renewal of French planning policies from the mid-1960s onwards, which were linked to the emergence of a new urban and landscape utopia. At the dawn of its 50th anniversary, the Cergy-Pontoise Recreational Park can be seen as an original and emblematic case study of such landscape designs. It was a laboratory for a young generation of landscape architects, in which they were able to develop and implement principles that are at the heart of teaching the profession in France today. These include observing the terrain, considering the site as a resource for the designed landscape, mastering earthworks and accompanying processes of landscape transformation. The park design allows us to re-examine the questions that landscape architects had to face and the formal answers they brought. We will confront them with today’s design practice and role of landscape architecture in order to reflect on the contemporary context of urban and territorial transition.