A co-founder — with François Vadepied — of Wagon Landscaping in 2010, Mathieu Gontier trained initially in fine arts, combined with Russian-language studies. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure de paysage in Versailles in 2007, and is today head of studies at the school’s Marseille campus. In his teaching, he describes an approach to design that is ‘grounded in observation, drawing, and engagement with the realities of each site’.
From this background, he retains a strong reliance on drawing as a core tool for thinking and designing — not merely as a means of representation, but as a way to explore and construct a project. This concept of designing, gardening and building, all at the same time, remains at the heart of Wagon’s philosophical and practical approach.
Mathieu oversees projects in the Paris region and in southern France, with a particular focus on grounding each intervention in its territorial and cultural context. He says that his practice is ‘based on a careful reading of sites, attentive to existing forms, uses, and perceptions. Landscape is approached as a process of measured transformation, revealing the qualities of a place while accommodating new uses.’
