This article considers the concept of the utopia from the point of view of garden design. It begins with an evocation of the `Jardin de Julie', the literary garden described in Rousseau and acutely analysed by Louis Marin. It then passes to a series of actual gardens created by the French contemporary designer Bernard Lassus, in which the use of landscape effects is seen as achieving similar dislocations of space and incitements to the imagination.
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References
1.
Bann, S. (1994) `A Luton Arcadia: Ian Hamilton Finlay's Contribution to the English Neo-Classical Tradition' , Journal of Garden History13: 1-2 .
2.
Lassus, B. (1977) Jardins imaginaires. Paris: Les Presses de la Connaissance .
3.
Lassus, B. (1989) Villes-paysages couleurs en Lorraine. Montdidier: Batigère .
4.
Lassus, B. (1999) The Landscape Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .
5.
Marin, L. (1976) `Disneyland, a Degenerate Utopia', in Glyph, 1. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press .
6.
Marin, L. (1992) Lectures traversières. Paris: Albin Michel .
