Reprint: "Persian Gardens" by Gaëtane Lamarche-Vadel, Éditions de la Villette

© Éditions de la Villette

Far from orientalist fantasies, identity essentialisations or tourist stereotypes, this book, which was awarded the Prix de l’Essai Émile Gallé in 2025, restores Persian gardens to their present-day reality, their multiple uses, their relationship with the elements and traces the complexity of their cultural roots.

Persian Gardens. An architectural and philosophical journey
Gaëtane Lamarche-Vadel
With a set of original maps and plans drawn by Pierre Farret.
Collection : Essais
Publication date: January 2025
  

Persian gardens are the geometry of an enclosure, perpendicular canals, a central pavilion, lines of trees, mosaics of flowers and checkerboards of fruit trees. They are poems, stories, ruins and drawings that archaeologists date back to the 6th century B.C. and even 4000 B.C. They are also a heritage that the last two centuries have frozen into a paradigm, the chahâr bâgh, legitimized in turn by an anchoring in the Koran, archaeological traces and vernacular architecture. Today, however, architects and historians are questioning the uniqueness of this model, tracing other genealogies, notably Zoroastrian, and revealing multiple uses, from subsistence farming to rendezvous, from hunting to military entrenchment. Others deplore the reduction of the Persian garden to a stereotype that yields to the culture of representation and tourism. These different interpretations echoed in the book underline the palimpsest nature of Persian gardens, which successive restorations either erase or reveal. Their permanence lies in their materiality, but also in their immateriality – the most difficult to maintain – emanating as much from the evanescence of colors, fragrances and rustles as from poetry itself.

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