Estuaire is a brand new concept, an artistic adventure divided in three parts, with its epilogue scheduled for 2011. The project will then carry on in various other forms. Each of Estuaire’s editions gives worldwide artists the opportunity to create perennial artworks and installations exhibited during the three months of the event. One of Estuaire’s goals is also for every riverside town to own, in time, a permanent piece, if not three for Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, and to engage the local population in participating actively to the creation of these art installations.

Estuaire is also a political and tourist project, aimed specifically at accompanying and spurring the foundation of the Nantes - Saint-Nazaire metropolis, and using the physical line drawn by the Loire river as the basis of a tour full of secrets.
Until 2011, the National scene of Nantes - le lieu unique - will bear the project; Estuaire will then get a life of its own, with the creation of an  organisation, aimed at maintaining the sites, communicating on the project and keeping it accessible to tourists.

This open park, made of art installations, of natural or man-made heritage, of remarkable industrial buildings, will give the estuary a striking  identity. Sensible town and country planning will be necessary - walking paths, cycle tracks, cottages, shelters, camping site, viewpoints,   belvederes, gardens, sports grounds - and will shape and make visible its assets.

Estuaire is very proud of its natural territory. Each installation, fascinating as it is, will inspire our perception of the landscape, and will draw a different perspective on an exceptional natural environment.

The strength of Estuaire is also to be at the meeting point of all the partners, environmental associations, industries, farmers, local  professional bodies, fishermen, hunters, the Coastal Protection Agency, all working hand in hand to increasingly make of the estuary a Éuropean tourist destination.

The riverside towns are now starting to design the riverbanks, to build pontoons, hence to make the project grow stronger. Moreover, the
juxtaposition of Estuaire’s art installations next to the cultural heritage of each riverside town reinforces the power of one another.

Jean Blaise
Director of le lieu unique - Estuaire

Daniel Buren et Patrick Bouchain

the trail in nantes
Ile de Nantes
Daniel Buren
Patrick Bouchain
“Les Anneaux”
Perennial Artwork for Estuaire 2007
Based on the Isle of Nantes, the site chosen for Les Anneaux represents the link between two eras: the great maritime and naval past of the town, and today’s great architectural and urban projects, putting Nantes on the European stage.

Daniel Buren wanted to highlight the double perspective of the Isle of Nantes: the architectural perspective, drawn by the docks and
the warehouses, and the natural perspective delineated by the Loire river. A series of 18 rings facing the river offer as many different cutouts of the landscape. At night, the enlightened rings - red, blue and green, three colours at the basis of so many others - become multiseeing
tools…

Ronan Signer

the trail ON THE ESTUARY
REZÉ (Trentemoult)
Roman Signer
“Le pendule”
Rezé has a strong architectural heritage (Le Corbusier, Dominique Perrault or Massimiliano Fuksas). One of its quarter, a former fisherman village, overlooks the river: Trentemoult. This is where Roman Signer made the decision to start off his project using an old concrete factory,
built at the end of the sixties, and which is now derelict.

Tadashi Kawamata

the trail ON THE ESTUARY
Lavau-sur-Loire
Tadashi Kawamata
“L’observatoire”
Following the creation of the channel and numerous planned landscape developments, the Lavau site has slowly turned into a marsh. And this is the particular aspect of the estuary that Tadashi Kawamata has decided to put forward, as early as 2007.
Tadashi Kawamata then initiates work with the village population as well as with students, creating a melting pot, which is vital to his creative process.
At Lavau, the commune is favourable to contemplating nature. He designs a new identity and uses the wooden path leading to an observatory, to offer a new viewpoint over the river to everyone. The building site of the Observatory started in 2007 with the end of
the path: little by little, the visitor rises in the middle of the reed beds and reaches a vast platform where a tower is built.
In 2009, the artist rounds up the construction by adding a wooden path in the surrounding meadows and reed beds that are drawing the line between the tower and the village. Tadashi Kawamata creates here a little path in wood, 40 cm above the ground, which is embedded in the
marsh and seems to float in the natural environment.
Movement accessible to the disabled / observatory : first floor only.
Walking length round trip: 1h30.

Felice Varini

the trail in saint-nazaire
Submarine base (Panoramic terrace)
Felice Varini
“Suite de triangles, Saint-Nazaire 2007″
Perennial Artwork for Estuaire 2007
The construction of the German submarine base between 1940 and 1942 disrupted significantly the port; ensuing its construction, the heavy bombardment destroyed almost all of the “Little Breton California”.
Nowadays, the project Town-Port is a vast town planning with the submarine base at its heart. Here, the vastness of the landscape
and its industrial identity challenged his capacity to explore space: the piece, a 2 km long painting, is the biggest ever executed by the artist.
From a viewpoint located on the roof of the panoramic terrace at the submarine base, Felice Varini draws a “horizontal line” which hugs the landscape around the Saint-Nazaire port. The division of the shapes above and below this line split the landscape into different sequences. The artist reveals a shape painted on a single level, a shape that detaches from and places itself on top of the architecture to which it seems to belong.
Leaving the viewpoint on the terrace now means experiencing the third dimension and seeing the explosion of the figure.

Gilles Clement

the trail in saint-nazaire
ROOF OF THE SUBMARINE BASE
Gilles Clément
“Le Jardin du Tiers Paysage”
Open to the public since 1998 thanks to the project of the urbanist Manuel de Sola Morales, the roof of the submarine base is now an open-air terrace between the sky and the ocean.

The Jardin du Tiers-Paysage is triptych which takes advantage of the three architectural devices of the site: The Wood of Aspen will be placed in Les Chambres d’éclatement des bombes in 2009, The garden of Grasses and Stonecrap in The Covered Rows scheduled for 2010,
and The Label Garden will be in The Pit in 2011.
Appearing suddenly from the concrete of the base, a 107 aspens with bright leaves sway in the wind. Having the base to scintillate and quiver is the first intention - poetic intention - of Gilles Clément, who sees in the base a place of resistance, where the ecological diversity of
the estuary can reside.

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