Just as a well kept home speaks volumes of the owner, a garden and its landscape too plays a vital role in reflecting the owner’s creativity, taste and style. A professionally designed landscape with its varied elements of water bodies and exotic greenery has, indeed, become an inevitable part of contemporary architecture, lending it depth and variety.
Landscaping can be broadly classified in two, traditional and contemporary. “A traditional landscape is one that’s not in order. But the contemporary style is one which is structured and where exists a clarity in style,” says Sandhya Mohandas an architect based in Calicut known for her designs with a minimalistic approach. “The quality of a landscape depends largely on its design,” she says. “The two aspects that have to be taken into account while designing is its softscape and hardscape.”
The hardscape consists of elements that cannot be moved like pathways, water bodies, retaining walls, seating area and the compound wall, while softscape consists of plants such as shrubs, grass and trees and all the green elements. If a sprawling lawn is inevitable to a typical landscaped garden now it’s being increasingly replaced by gravel, wood chips, water bodies and pebbles. “Maintenance and upkeep of lawns have become an expensive affair,” says Sandhya as she goes on to elaborate how extensive use of hardscape elements have contributed to the water shortage in Kerala.
Pathways have become a highlight of most of the sprawling landscaped gar dens and the two popular ways of doing it is either by using concrete or by using interlocking tiles in a bed of gravel. These methods prevent water from reaching the ground thus reducing the water table. “This calls for responsible designing keeping in mind careful preservation of Nature and its various aspects.”
Sandhya is against the use of artificial green elements in a landscape. She even feels strongly for anything that restricts the free growth of plants.
“A reason why I am against the use of potted plants and even Bonsai in my designs.” Design according to the architect depends invariably on the texture and rigidity of the landscape and softscape. “They can even be whacky and weird and still emanate a positive energy with clever designing.”
She cites the example of a garden full of trees which was destroyed by a devastating storm. “The uprooted trees were carefully planted back into the soil upside down and blooms of different hues were made to grow on the roots, magically transforming them.”
A believer of minimalism, Sandhya is an advocate of ‘less is more’, which is vividly portrayed in her designs as well. She recommends Zen garden for houses with less com pound area. Zen gardens can lend any landscape a beauty without much clutter. It creates a miniature stylised landscape through carefully composed arrangement of rocks, water features, trees and bushes and uses gravel and sands to represent ripples in water. Zen Garden is relatively small, surrounded by a wall.
“They don’t replicate nature in its physical form but they replicate its essence in a very unique way. More than the elements it’s the placement that is of extreme importance. A Zen garden is ideal for meditational purpose and consists mainly of hardscape. Even lighting plays a major role in landscaping by creating points of interest.”
Coming back to contemporary designs, Sandhya cites the example of the Mughal gardens of a different era that came close to the style with its structured look and demarcations for each and every elements like the fountain and other water bodies. “To sum it up contemporary landscaping is clever designing with lot of thought for detailing. The landscape should integrate with the structure or building it holds and enhance its appearance.”
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