Working from Ursa Major constellation, Kynia Maruyama spreads out, tests and builds a “starry garden” on the dock of Paimbœuf. Using materials of the area (chestnut poles, slates, sand and earth from the Loire banks, fishing net, or bird net, barks from exotic trees coming from the port for wood, reeds …), this space is meant to be experienced. You can walk on it, climb on it like into an observatory or a diving board high above the Loire River.

More than everything, Kynia Maruyama wanted to work with the children of Paimbœuf schools: if Ursa Major is a symbol of future hope, the “jardin étoilé” (starry garden) is for them an exhibition place of what they will have created throughout the school year. Within the same process of collaboration and knowledge transmission, students of three schools of architecture – Nantes, Versailles and Tokyo– and those from the school of landscape of Versailles have been associated to the design and construction work of this “Jardin étoilé” (starry garden).

The Team Zoo is a variable geometry association of architects trained in Takamasa Yoshizaka’s workshop in the University of Waseda in Tokyo. It is made up of approximately ten teams having developed from two original groups, the “Atelier Mobile” (mobile workshop) founded in 1969 by Kinya Maruyama and the “Atelier ZO” in 1971. “For the Team Zoo, a construction is not an object but a sphere of communication, a tool for integration which needs, like clothes, to protect without hampering movement and like a landscape to change with time– Patrice Goulet – Extract from the brochure of Team Zoo, Atelier Mobile–Kinya Maruyama, 1993.).