Among the many creations of the Corajoud Workshop, we can find the Sausset Park in Seine-Saint-Denis (1981), the new layout of the left bank quays in Bordeaux (2000-2008), the organization of public spaces of the urban Boulevard of the International “Cité” in Lyon (1995, in collaboration with RPBW), the international “Cité” and the extension of the “Tête d’Or” park in Lyon (1996, in collaboration with RPBW), the transformation of the Bourlémont hill for the project of a monastery and new gateway by Renzo Piano on the hill Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, Haute-Saône.
Annecy (France), 1937 – Paris (France), 2014
Michel Corajoud was born in Annecy on July 14th, 1937. He died in Paris on October 29th, 2014. He studied at the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs” and became acquainted with Jacques Simon (1929-2015), a landscape architect and a teacher. This meeting was decisive, and it opened the way to what became his great passion for projects and for the pleasure of transmitting landscape architecture. He graduated as a Landscape architect. After having worked with Jacques Simon’s workshop from 1964 to 1966, he became a partner in AUA (Atelier d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture) for about ten years. In 1975, he founded the Corajoud workshop with his wife Claire Picherot. At the same time, he became a teacher at the ENSH (“Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Horticulture”) and at the ENSP (“Ecole Supérieure due Paysage” in Versailles). He became a Member of the inter-ministerial Committee of creation of the French Institute of Landscape.
“Creating a landscape is like starting a conversation”
Michel Corajoud
He was a loquacious lecturer. His fluent speech, with a precise and refined vocabulary, was always easy to grasp for the public. It made him a great teacher, who was able to transmit a proven project method.
His method consists in a long observation of the logic underlying the dynamic development of nature. He then confronts it with poetic and subjective imagination. This attitude to the project causes a permanent negotiation between formal intentions and the resistance of the landscape reality.
Michel Corajoud’s works had a huge impact on the “Ecole Française du Paysage” (French School of Landscape) and he brilliantly shared his ideas through his writings and his lectures.
He was decorated of the “Ordre National du Mérite”, and he was awarded many distinctions: Silver Medal of the Architecture Academy (1985), “Grand Prix du Paysage” (1992), “Grand Prix d’Urbanisme” (2003), International Prize André Lenôtre for his complete works (2013).
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