LANDSCAPE DESIGNING

LANDSCAPE DESIGNING – key to a green urbanscape by Geetha Prasad

The quality of our urban green space is increasingly recognised as crucial to the quality of life in urban areas. City dwellers face a wide range of  environmental challenges like polluted air and water, dwindling open space, garbage, soot-spawning vehicles, traffic, the impact of industries, etc.

Green spaces like parks and green belts are integral parts of urban society. By offering lung space for recreation, parks improve community health and increase property value. They cool the city through transpiration and evaporation and also help raise the quality of green space across the city. These urban green spaces are a part of the lives of all the residents of society regardless of age, sex, social class and income.

Awareness

Today, people want green areas at their doorstep, not tucked away in distant public parks. Local and available open space is crucial to many people’s sense of enjoyment. This growing awareness has opened opportunities for landscape designing.

Landscape designing is the science and art of modifying land areas by organising natural, cultivated or constructed elements according to an aesthetic plan. These elements include topographical features such as hills, valleys, around private dwellings, deals with the analysis, planning, design management, preservation and rehabilitation of land and also in determining the environmental impact. It integrates, from the conception, the element of architecture, urban design and civil engineering for a meaningful and practical solution. Landscaping is an art that requires many and varied skills of craftspeople for implementation. While conceiving a design the landscape designer strives for a landscape which is beautiful, but on the practical side of the ledger also serves many functions.

Functionality

Every part of a well conceived landscape should function. From basic practical achievements such as cooling in summer, allowing the sun’s warmth to heat in the winter, blocking and screening unwanted views and sheltering from rain while controlling the drainage of surface water, to merely providing colour and fragrance to be sensed with enjoyment, a well designed landscape handles many problems. Thus making space useful, comfortable, relaxing and stimulating.

A successful design not only enhances the economical attractiveness of the site, but also provides a clean, green and aesthetically pleasing environment for residents, a place useful to all age group – elders to socially interact with each other, children to play and learn about nature and for health-conscious people to jog and exercise. In general, a place where people can relax and feel a sense of oneness with nature.

Geetha Prasad has specialised in murals from the J.J.School of Art and Architecture, Mumbai. She  currently runs Callos Hortus, a landscape consultancy, in Hyderabad.