client: Association Jardin Urbain Lausann
team: Güller Güller architecture urbanism, Francesca e Clara Prosdocimo, Luft&Laune (balloon structures), S. Meier (communication)

Renaissance of the quartier du Flon
The garden-festival of Lausanne Jardins 2004 takes place inside the Flon, a former industrial area right in the center of the city. Our project of the 'Fleur du Flon' is more than a garden. It is a symbol for the renaissance of this part of Lausanne, a sign for it re-flourishing as a new, highly lively and experimental quarter of the city. The 'Fleur du Flon' links two levels of the city - the lower valley of the Flon-river and the arena of the surrounding city which lays above the roofs of the Flon. It does not remain captured in the narrow alleys, but sprouts out of its alley to open up the quarter. It is an urban intervention, an event-space, a temporary installation, an abstract flower visible from everywhere in the surrounding city.

An abstract flower, day and night
The 'Fleur' - with its body filling the in-between-space of the industrial buildings and its two 'flowers' that overlook the city - is a floating garden and a subtle light-machine that radiates images of gardens and flowers into the Flon and with its periscopes out into the city. At night the shining 'Fleur' illuminates the narrow alley, radiates the live of the city quarter and attracts people. At day it appears as an abstract flower, waving gently in the wind. The interior, accessible via the neighboring second-hand clothing-shop, holds a gallery of gardens changing with the season. It is to an incubator and laboratory, where local artistes are invited to create ephemeral gardens and stimulate the senses to the theme of flowers.