Exposition Les "Arbres de Paris" - La nature comme source d'inspiration

Watercolours and sepia ink drawings by Yanosh KALDY, architect, graphic artist

Exhibition Presentation

For an architect, for a painter, Paris and its trees are sources of inspiration: parks, gardens, squares, avenues, secret alleys, schoolyards, discreet plazas, cemeteries, or community gardens, each arrondissement strives to implant nature between the cobblestones, to raise trees between buildings, to cultivate foliage, protecting inhabitants, moderating the climate. The tree, admired throughout time for its power, its material, and the nobility of its forms, is now – particularly in urban environments – recognised and respected for its regulating, protective, and restorative virtues in the face of the multiple pollutions created by Man in less than two centuries.

My paternal grandmother's house – in a small village in Transdanubia – was 500 metres from a large state forest. As a child, I often went there to pick porcini mushrooms or to walk, watch, and listen to the trees in their natural environment, "at home"! As an adult, living in an urban environment – an artificial world – I observe the "humanising" contribution of trees. Our hyperactive society needs the Beauty, serenity, and calm of trees more than ever.

The tree inspired and still inspires our constructions, our Architecture: it is the "trunk, body, column" with its "branches, arms, ogival arches" of our cathedrals, but also the modern structures of contemporary architecture, organic architecture, timber frames, or metal frames.

I learned, empirically, through observation and by drawing them, that trees are as varied as human beings. Each tree has its character; no two are alike on Earth. Beauty in difference.

Postscript

Paris is one of the most wooded capitals in Europe. Paris's tree heritage consists of:

100,000 alignment trees representing a linear distance of approximately 700 km planted on the 1650 Parisian public roads;

40,000 trees in