LANDSCAPE IN MOVEMENT AND PAUSES

In search of a sensitive architectural language that reveals the identity of the landscape structure of Larzac, France.

The landscape as we see it is not immutable in time. It is in constant evolution over different time frames. In the long term, the erosion of the rocks accentuates the cuts in the landscape - gorges, faults, cracks. In the short term - one yearthe landscape catches the seasons, with sometimes violent Cévennes rainfall and very dry summers, and is shaped and reshaped, capturing moments of life in this environment - fauna, ores - and by intersecting human activities.

Two predominant lines emerge in these steep gorges. The watercourse, which is mainly responsible for its limestone relief, can be very violent during Cevennes episodes. The second line is intimately linked to the notion of «lines of desire». This is the route of the paths that will be known as the Grandes Randonnées.

Man is at the base of its creation, and this path will be crossed by landmarks and viewpoints during its course. These two routes are not similar, but they operate in a strong temporal sense.

They are in perpetual movement in the gorge. These two routes with different speeds are punctuated by man-made objects - hydraulic structures, landmarkswhich anchor them in a «frozen» time.

The notion of infrastructure does not necessarily rhyme with hardness and monumentality. It can be thought of and built in a subtle way, it can be evolving, built with certain materials from the landscape itself, it can even be durable. It is sometimes invisible, impalpable, but here it frames, gives a scale, and interrupts the sinuous and continuous landscape of the karst canyons. The scale of man is revealed from these gates by pointing to the fundamental elements of the gorges - the flow of the streams, the underground rivers, the limestone walls.