The context

The Vauban hill overlooks Marseille at an altitude of 150 meters. Cut off from the rest of the city, this village-like neighborhood is only accessible by a series of long stairways of several hundred steps. At the top, a 200 square meter parcel of land offers a panoramic view of the northern part of the city. The lot was previously occupied by a homeless man, remembered by the neighborhood as La Goupille, before being abandoned and going unused for several decades. Eleven families in the neighborhood, seeing the lot rich esthetic and symbolic potential, expressed the wish to rehabilitate this public space, transforming it into a vine arbor and vegetable garden.

The commission

A small square and vegetable garden in an abandoned public space

The landscape architect Natacha Guillaumont accompanied the progressive transformation of this vacant lot over a period of five years, transformaing it into a place of good-neighborliness and contemplation - a threshold to the sky. 

Natacha Guillaumont

Natacha Guillaumont, landscape architect DPLG, was born in Le Cheylard in 1969. She lives and works in Marseille, where she created the organization La Compagnie du Vent. A 1997 graduate of the national landscape architecture school in Versailles, she has worked, among others, for the Ardèche County Council (Conseil Général) in Chateauvallon (Var), with Gilles Clément.