Spanish Influence on French Modernist Landscape Architects

This paper aims at describing the influence of Spanish gardens, and more specifically Andalusian gardens, on French landscape architects of the modern movement. The focus is on three major figures of landscape gardening in France at the beginning of the XXth century: Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier, Paul Vera and Albert Laprade. Forestier's garden for M. Guy at Beziers, Paul Vera's garden for Paul-Elie Gernez at Honfleur, Laprade's Riad at Ramonville and their writings Les jardins modernes (1911), Le Nouveau Jardin (1912), Le Jardin (1932) proves how gardening in Spain has inspired these landscape architects at many levels. It guided the choice of flowers and vegetation, and their disposition in the gardens. It also acted as a source of shapes and patterns for handicrafts and constructions in the garden such as ponds, stairs and pergolas. Building techniques and the use of mineral materials also derived from Moorish garden art. French landscape architects use an ornamental repertoire inspired by Arab-Andalusian and Islamic styles. This influence comes within the more general context of the rediscovery and renewed interest in Islamic and Oriental culture at the beginning of the XXth century. French colonies in North Africa played an important role in the introduction of the Arab-Andalusian model in France. Thus, many landscape architects have seen there gardens of Moorish tradition which they reinterpreted in France during the 1920's and 1930's.