The Garden of Lucien Kroll and Louis Le Roy

The Garden of Lucien Kroll and Louis Le Roy

The image provided in Kroll's Buildings and Projects reflects and ecological aspect of Kroll's approach to design, community and architecture. In 1970, he worked with the artist and architect Louis Le Roy, most known for his construction of the "Ekocathedral." The image above depicts students cultivating a collection of debris and found items from surrounding areas brought to a lot near the local university with the intentions of constructing a garden while avoiding the sterility of "domesticated, obedient, supervised nature" (Kroll 60). The project truly highlights the ecological aspects of Kroll's design philosophy which served to interact with physical spaces and the passage of time as continual processes in conversation with one another, rather than the normative developments of structures in opposition to time and the land they occupy. Krzysztof Wodiczko describes Kroll's architectural projects as "a kind of deconstruction as construction, as proactive work with other people” and as "nomadic" (Leger 125). His works were not meant to be stagnant and controlled, the garden seeked to create new and ever-changing spaces out of other's disuse. However, Kroll admits in his own commentaries on the project that their work "did not comply with the ideas of the institution, and suddenly they normalized everything”
(Kroll 60). The issue with construction out of destruction turns out to be the necessity of time's passage. The dominant cultures and governments seemingly construct an immediacy for palpable aesthetic appearance and controlled spaces, so the development of a garden such as the one attempted by Kroll, Le Roy, and the students was not permitted. Kroll indicates that “the authorities resolved to procure order and cleared out the gardens” (Kroll 63). Participatory design as well as "time-based architecture" requires a patience with process rather than a completion of a product (Vollard 75).

Lucien Kroll, Louis Le Roy, unnamed students

Kroll, Lucien. Buildings and Projects. Rizzoli, 1987.

Rizzoli Publications

1970-1971

Photograph, .jpeg

English

Landscape Architecture

50°51'09.8"N 4°26'51.5"E