The International Garden Festival is preparing its eleventh edition and is issuing a call for proposals to select designers who will create temporary gardens to be presented from June 26 to October 3, 2010 on the site of Les Jardins de Metis / Reford Gardens. This call for proposals is open to all landscape architects, architects, designers and artists from Canada and abroad. The deadline for submission of entries is Friday, November 6, 2009.
The Theme of the 2010 Festival is: “PARADISE”
Since the beginning of time humans have imagined paradise on earth as a garden. These places, by evoking our senses, have pulled us out of our everyday world to experience the sublime. What does paradise look like today?
Building on emerging practices in landscape architecture, designers are invited to imagine their garden of paradise; a creation that will speak to the history of gardening, to philosophy, to religion and to history in general, as well as to contemporary society and to your own personal history.
At a time when landscape design and design in general are being pushed towards functionality and utility, it is an opportune moment to bring these disciplines to what is more emotional and spiritual. By focusing on the theme of paradise, designers should consider their projects around the idea of a “possible unknown”, replete with discoveries and wonder. The projects selected will demonstrate through the use of new practices the role that landscape architecture may be expected to play in our current political and social context.
In choosing this theme for the 2010 edition, the International Garden Festival seeks to offer landscape architects, architects, designers and artists an opportunity to return to what is essential to the creative process, to construct a place of beauty that enriches our lives. We need to think about paradise today, and take from this exercise both energy and inspiration. The International Garden Festival, with its links to the past and its vision for the future, offers the ideal platform for designers who have carte blanche to imagine their paradise, and in so doing create our paradise.
The International Garden Festival is recognized as one of the most important events of its kind in North America and one of the leading annual garden festivals in the world. Since 2000, 850,000 visitors have explored more than 100 gardens created by over 200 designers from 10 countries. The Festival is a unique forum for innovation and experimentation and an exceptional showcase and launching pad for participating designers from a host of disciplines. It provides an annual rendez-vous for admirers of contemporary gardens and design as well as offering a unique space for those involved in the renewal of this art form.
For this 11th edition, the Festival will present 20 temporary gardens along with a programme that will include a range of activities and events related to landscape architecture and for the general public (workshops, lectures, exhibitions).
The International Garden Festival and its designers have garnered many regional, provincial and national awards. The event was awarded the prix Hector-Fabre 2007 by Quebec’s ministere des Relations internationales in recognition of the event’s contribution to the international reputation of Qu?bec and the Gaspesie and Lower St. Lawrence regions.
The Reford Gardens are located on the shores of the St. Lawrence and Mitis rivers in Quebec, Canada. Created by avid gardener and plant collector, Elsie Reford, the gardens were declared a national historic site in 1995 by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. They are considered one of the premier gardens in North America and an obligatory stop for all those visiting eastern Quebec.
Register by: 11-06-2009 / Submit by: 11-06-2009
For more information, check the Original Post Here
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