Fanny Léglise. You visited the exhibition Nouvelles saisons, self-portraits of a territory several times and observed the rotation of the contributions on display. What did you think of it?
Susanne Eliasson. The proposals are very interesting, all very subtle, but they are also very uniform. What struck me during my first visit was that there were few contrasts, a fairly homogeneous tone, nothing garish. With its unity of arches and stone, the large gallery space obviously contributes to this feeling. However, one might imagine that with such diverse contributors—even if they are connected as residents, architects, or artists rooted in the same place—the exhibition would highlight more heterogeneity. In my opinion, this says something about the Bordeaux metropolitan area. There is something common that runs through it. Is it related to the climate or the landscape? It says something about its identity.
There is a general consensus today around identity and territorial roots, which is politically impossible to challenge. On the one hand, this consensus revolves around the question of terroir—which in Bordeaux is linked to wine-growing lands. This is also very prominent in the rest of France. On the other hand, in the current climate and ecological context, it takes the form of a return to (re)sources. We ask ourselves “where to land”, following Bruno Latour, who attempted to define in a short essay (Où atterrir in French) published in 2017 what climate change meant for each of us. However, even if territorial anchoring is essential, it is striking to note how difficult it is for us today to be critical, even on architectural issues. We are immediately told that this is not the issue, that criticism is not important in view of the climate emergency...
FL. Some contributions may contain implicit criticism. Such as the work of Annaëlle Terrade, who highlighted the transformations of their habitats by families in Ambarès-et-Lagrave, showing the need for appropriation from generic and identical housing. Or the video on the transformation of Mérignac-Beutre, a project by Christophe Hutin, where we discover the lives of the inhabitants and their use of space, which is far from smooth.
SE. Yes, absolutely, and these contributions are essential because they show how people formulate criticism through their own appropriation of space. These contributions highlight the incredible diversity of practices and lifestyles. This does not prevent us from building solidarity with one another. It is a very positive observation. Among professionals, this criticism seems less prevalent today, most likely because we have less and less space and time to develop it. We see this in our daily professional practice: we don't have much opportunity to take a step back and develop a critical perspective.
FL. You mentioned homogeneity between the contributions. Could this be due to the continuity of the Bordeaux area, its flat topography, and the horizontality of its buildings?
SE. The Bordeaux area is certainly horizontal, but it is not as spread out as other metropolitan areas. The city center and certain municipalities are particularly dense, and then you quickly come to the Landes forest and wine-growing areas. Urban sprawl—compared to other cities or contexts—is fairly homogeneous. A fairly strong consistency has been maintained for decades, with varying degrees of quality. This is inherent to the territory: the stone city, built in the city center and its various towns. Urbanization has taken place in a fairly natural way. The work of archaeogeographer Cédric Lavigne clearly shows how the Bordeaux metropolitan area developed from the natural organization of the territory, its waterways, and its natural areas. The construction method, the use of stone, and the low levels of the buildings also play a role in this urban coherence. There is a form of territorial logic that has been accompanied by policies in recent decades. The starting point for urbanization is therefore rather organic, prior to densification and transformation.
FL. Doesn't the unprecedented increase in population create a break in this homogeneity?
SE. It's the same issue in all major cities. What I'm wondering about today is how the profession assesses what we have produced—in Bordeaux and elsewhere—in terms of new neighborhoods. It's certainly not a success. Taking pieces and designing new blocks, neighborhoods, 2,000 housing units here and there. Planning everything. It doesn't work, and yet we continue because economic logic forces us to. One of the natural reactions to this observation is to say that we cannot keep building on this scale. And that we must reduce our level of intervention. That's right, and at the same time, we also need to connect what we produce on a larger scale. We mustn't be satisfied with working on an architectural scale that is limited to the object and stop imagining and planning on a large scale. On the contrary, I believe that today we particularly need an urban vision. Filling all the empty spaces is not enough to define the city of tomorrow. Where do we live together? What makes us common?
At GRAU, we have been working on this subject for several years through our reflections on what we call the Garden Metropolis, i.e., the predominantly residential city built over the last 150 years as a direct extension of the old city centers. Like a garden, this urban area brings together distinct, sometimes opposing subjects and functions that must interact and coexist. By its very nature, a garden evolves over time. It accepts transformation, adapts to it, and channels it. It is this capacity that we draw on to think about the contemporary metropolis: not as a closed system, but as a living medium where each project becomes an opportunity to articulate the near and the far, the individual and the common. The Garden Metropolis is not a formal model, but an open vision of the decentralized city, where the landscape becomes a collective structure, a common language from which to invent new ways of living.
We are at a turning point between a necessary change of scale and the risk of losing sight of the bigger picture. In GRAU's work in Bordeaux, we have always clung to the notion of “landscape.” The latter can become a powerful link if we grasp it beyond its ecological role. Streets are certainly functional, but they are also where we live, where social ties are created, and the landscape must also be a social link. We work on gardens because they come in several scales. There are small ones, like the ones we might have at home, public gardens, and finally the idea of large-scale gardens. By multiplying small things, we can still build a common, shared vision.
FL. What role do architects play in shaping this shared history?
SE. In the past, we could accept a strong dichotomy between architecture and landscape. The ancient city had a clear form, framed by buildings and monuments that organized the space in which the landscape was arranged. Today, we are no longer able to do that. This is not a nostalgic vision of the ancient city, but a clear observation from which we must draw conclusions. One of these conclusions is that we can no longer think of architecture and landscape separately. Today, we need to train “spatial designers.” In France, architects are not engineers, nor are urban planners and landscape architects. What brings these disciplines together is spatial thinking.
I think this requires a thorough reform of education and teaching methods in space-related professions. If we train all designers using a common core curriculum, we could then develop their interests, moving more towards landscape design or urban planning. In the projects I examine as a consulting architect in Bordeaux, architecture and landscape are always addressed, but with varying degrees of correspondence. Very often, the built environment is designed by architects, and the open spaces are then developed by landscape architects. Each has their own domain. I try to bridge the gap, based on existing projects, so that there is a real connection between the two.
One of the most striking recent examples in the city is Duncan Lewis's project in Bastide Niel. His housing units offer a classic interior volume coupled with a garden space to live in. What's fabulous is that the project's landscape becomes much more than just a garden for the residents. It also provides structure for the neighbors, the street, and the city in general. When I see it, I think that all projects in Bastide Niel should follow this principle, which is both very simple and absolutely radical, and which can completely change the city.
This example clearly shows that we can respond to the urgent issues of our time while still projecting ambitious visions for our shared future in cities. Such a project cannot exist if architecture and landscape are disconnected. It is a single project. This is what we have tried to do with the social housing we built in Parempuyre for Aquitanis. There, the landscape is an essential tool for bringing residents together by creating different natural filters. The housing units are arranged in a continuous horizontal block, coupled with a tree-lined promenade. One cannot exist without the other.
We need to strengthen these links between architecture and landscape, not only to respond to the climate emergency but also to build places. In 2013, we drew up the Caudéran master plan with Michel and Claire Corajoud. It was a very fruitful collaboration. As a landscape architect, Michel was interested in buildings. He said, “I'll defend architecture a little, and you defend the landscape a little.” We had fascinating discussions about the neighborhood. When you work on a city, you need multiple perspectives.
FL. Rather than an urban vision, in Nouvelles saisons, there are many projects that focus on promoting local industries, starting with materials and rediscovering traditional crafts...
SE. Craftsmanship is perhaps one of the only ways to find meaning today and to master what we do. The two are linked. Meaning exists in mastering what we make. Today's architects are overwhelmed by all kinds of economic constraints and by the sheer number of standards and regulations. It's almost impossible to design a pleasant building today. Take the example of the ground floor in a city: we have to multiply the number of closed technical rooms. We have to put in bicycle parking, which also has to be closed. We no longer have room to welcome people and no longer have the means to build a living interface with the public domain; nothing is on a pedestrian scale anymore. We produce senseless things despite our good intentions. In response to this, the return to craftsmanship is human, it is sensory.
But if we all retreat in craftsmanship, who will have the big picture? There is also a prevailing discourse in architecture schools, in France as elsewhere, that says that architects today should be primarily interested in construction and materials. This idea carries a certain risk, that of forgetting that our profession is above all a social one. Just because modernism has failed does not mean we should no longer consider our profession to be a social one.
We must cultivate several types of thinking at the same time, which can sometimes be contradictory, particularly when it comes to our living environment. Nothing is simple, black or white; we are forced to juggle many ideas, try to create connections, and deal with complex visions. This means that we must move away from overly binary visions. Today's cities are highly complex and function without the forces of power that existed in the past. We cannot withdraw from the larger scale, if only to continue to confront our opinions and visions.
With the Garden Metropolis, we show that an ambitious and potentially powerful transformation of the city is possible. What will the city look like in 50 years, beyond a programmatic perspective? This is a question we must ask ourselves. When we look at the work of German urban planner and architect Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer on the transformation of Chicago, we can interpret his thoughts on the gradual erosion of the urban grid as a completely utopian proposal. However, his speculations were not to be read as physical projects to be carried out as they stood, but as a process of reflection on the transformation of the city over the long term. And ultimately, the disintegration of the grid as he imagined it is almost what happened in American suburbia, as Albert Pope explains in his book Ladders (1996). Today, we lack this kind of large-scale physical projection onto the city. That is why, at the agency, we strive to draw and write about these subjects. We are currently completing a research that uses Chicago as a case study to understand the evolution of the contemporary city and offer a forward-looking vision of the future.
FL. Is this a way of reopening our imaginations, of proposing new narratives?
SE. Today, we tend to think—and this is a Western-centric view—that we have done everything, produced everything, and that all that remains is to transform. If we are talking about the construction of the European city, this is true. Transforming does not mean stopping planning. It is precisely because we are living in a time of crisis that we need to build even more. Building in the sense of planning ambitious shared visions for the territory. We need collective perspectives, and I am convinced that all of us—architects, urban planners, and landscape architects—must tackle this work head-on because we think spatially.
Interview by Fanny Léglise on Novembre 27th, 2025.