The laudation given by Lieneke van Campen can be downloaded here.
The Paris Attacks Memorial Garden, by Wagon Landscaping and Gilles Clément, commemorating the events of 13 November 2015, is located in the heart of the city. It is not situated at any of the locations that were targeted on that date. Instead, the six locations have been brought together in one place. The garden is intended to preserve the memory of that night.
The layouts of the six sites and their immediate surroundings have been removed from the city map and form the garden’s structural framework. From Paris’s disturbed, fragmented, stony ground emerges a space of calm and clarity. As visitors walk through the garden, they may experience a sense of both familiarity and displacement. Once ordinary places — such as cafés, concert halls and street corners — have been made unfamiliar, they evoke the moment when everyday life fractured suddenly.
Vegetation plays a central role in this landscape. Rock garden plants emerge from the chaotic granite ground, symbolising rebirth and the continued presence of life in the aftermath of the attacks.
This is a place where people can find or lose their sense of direction. It is a place for walking, reflection and children playing. After the rain, birds bathe in the shallow stone basins. This garden is a space for remembrance and an homage to life. At night, the garden is softly illuminated. Small points of light shimmer, forming a constellation that evokes the starry sky on the night of 13 November 2015.
The jury was impressed by the way in which the Memorial Garden unites remembrance, everyday use and landscape quality in such a restrained and humane manner. The design provides a modern response to collective trauma by incorporating calm, reflection, and social resilience into the urban landscape.