The context of the order :

The municipal team of Lathus Saint Rémy applied for the New Aquitaine Region’s “Rurality Cluster” scheme, experimentation and innovation in rural areas. Lathus Saint Rémy is located in the Vienne department on the borders of Poitou and Limousin. It extends over a very large area, which the inhabitants like to compare to the surface of Paris. It is made up of 2 villages, 12 hamlets and about a hundred localities.

The town called upon Bruit du frigo to assist it with a collective dynamic around the appropriation of public spaces and the calming of the town’s entrances. It wanted an intervention that brought together tactical urban planning to create use, accompanied by vegetation and a graphic intervention to mark the entrances to inhabited areas.

A plural team :

Bruit du frigo has put together a team with the landscape designer Antoine Tison for the plant part and the artist Eno for the signage. The client wanted an experimental project in the town of Saint Rémy (80 inhabitants) and in the hamlet of La Betouille (35 inhabitants), before expanding to the other hamlets in the area. After a period of identification by our team, a period of consultation followed to produce the outline of the À table project. This was presented to the inhabitants before being built in June during an open construction site on the two determined locations.

The intervention of the artist Eno, which had seduced both the sponsors and the inhabitants, could not be carried out. It consisted of painting the roadways at the entrances to the towns to indicate to motorists that they were entering an inhabited area. The refusal was established by the general direction of infrastructures, transport and mobilities, indicating that an operation of this kind cannot take place outside of meeting zones, where the speed limit is 20 km/h. The town of Lathus Saint Rémy, whose urban requalification project is still in its early stages, has granted itself a postponement until the roadwork is completed. This signage may then be implemented.

At the table !

The À table project is aimed at an ageing population, most of whom have their own home and garden. The challenge is to build on the collective practices that take place in the village hall, to move them into the public space and to invite the inhabitants to create meeting areas outside their homes.

À table is a generous, practical and comfortable piece of wooden furniture that can be installed on a first site: near the village hall, and on a second site: at the entrance to the hamlet of La Betouille. It offers seats with backrests and a circular table that can be used to organise meals, shows, concerts, board game competitions of all kinds or simply a place to chat. In Saint Rémy, benches with the same design offer two more intimate resurgences on the square, highlighting the church that floats a little in the middle.

The round shape interprets the vocabulary of the village kiosk, embellished with planting around its perimeter. As they grow, they will provide a green and shady cover.

The local countryside has a bocage tradition, and it is following this inspiration that the landscape designer Antoine Tison has worked. The vegetation strategy is found at the entrances to the town. The choice of plants favoured low-maintenance and low-water consumption species, with rapid development. In keeping with the initial work of the artist Eno, Antoine Tison has favoured the choice of varieties whose colour palette changes with the seasons. A remarkable tree is placed at the entrance to the town and becomes a sign of identity for the town.