A greening project on the La Défense esplanade will begin in 2024

Today, 35% of the pedestrian area of ​​the business district, 600 m long, is vegetated. With this project designed by the landscape architect Michel Desvigne, the objective is to increase this share to 60% of the esplanade, according to the general manager of Paris La Défense, Pierre-Yves Guice.

"The idea is to keep the consistency of Dan Kiley's original project imagined in 1972 by adding layers of vegetation to make it a vast park on slabs," said the landscape designer during the presentation press conference.

For the LR president of the Hauts-de-Seine department who is financing the project, Georges Siffredi, "the mineral forecourt will experience a radical change" because this "concrete slab will give way to green islands and freshness".

The esplanade was built on the works of the RER A, line 1 of the metro and the A14 motorway.

Between the Agam (in the center of the esplanade) and Takis (bottom) basins and at the foot of the 450 plane trees planted fifty years ago, "intermediate strata" will be created with mid-height trees, large flowerbeds of plants, lawn, shrubs or hedges.

"We want to reveal a totally unknown garden in the Paris region, which remains faithful to Dan Kiley and to classic French gardens", detailed the landscape designer Michel Desvigne, who was "not oriented towards an urban forest" with tall trees so as not to "hide the space and all the buildings", the towers of the business district. This garden will be located in the historical axis traced by the gardener of Louis XIV, André Le Nôtre, with the two other emblematic gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs-Elysées.

From 2024, the project "historic and which will considerably change the daily life of users", i.e. the 180.000 employees and 42.000 inhabitants, will be "delivered in sequence", specified general manager Pierre-Yves Guice.