When an architect or a town planner plans, he is in actuality, intervening with ‘living system’. The intervention can be disastrous if insufficient thought is given to the effects of development, especially its long-term consequences on the environment. The blend between man and nature will not be harmonius, but there will be imbalance or contradiction instead. In the long-run the total environment is bound to deteriorate. This is what ecology is all about- the inter-relationship between living and non-living things and their habitat.
Landscape Architecture is the art of designing the environment with the help of natural elements like stones, bricks, water, landforms… etc.
Italian Gardens
If we design a building aesthetically good and also decorate it beautifully from inside, yet if its surrounding outside area is rubbish, then the beauty of the building will be considered reduced. As such the building must have a beautiful surrounding. This is achieved by landscape development.
Landscaping is an art of planning the drives, walks, lawns, shrubs, gardens, flower-beds etc. so as to form a beautiful setting for a building. The main purpose of landscaping is to create a joyful environment round the building and give the occupants a healthy breath, good appearance and natural beauty.
Landscape design enhances the aesthetic appeal of a building. It entails planning the space outside or surrounding a construction or a building.
The job of the landscape designer is to manipulate and shape the natural layout of the site to suit his uses and create aesthetic pleasure. The outdoor environment could be designed with natural or man-made components i.e., it could be natural or artificial.
The importance of Landscape Architecture should not be undermined.
Persian Garden Style evolved after the Egyptian Style of gardening. It marked the beginning of “Modern Garden Architecture”. The Persian garden was an answer to the aridity of the local climate where the high walled garden and the shady trees with its air cooled by streams and fountains, was a simple recipe for paradise. Mediterranean and hence all Western Gardens have their origins in Egypt between three and four thousand years ago. Since Egypt is a natural desert depending on the Nile for its fertility, its gardens were planted along reservoirs and irrigation canals.
Taj Mughal Gardens - Persian Style
The canals were straight for practical reasons; trees planted followed straight lines along the canals, It was also natural for the canal to have fish, lotus and supply of water. Hence, the theory goes that axial designs and layouts of gardens, the ‘formality’ of all classical Mediterranean inspired gardens to the present – via the Persians whose style swept eastwards to India and westwards via Spain with spread of Islam, and by the Romans whose adaptation of the Egyptian Style was repeated in the Renaissance.
Fallingwater is an unique example of modern Organic Architecture, which was designed by Architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1934 in rural Pennsylvania, 80 kilometers southeast of Pittsburgh.
Kaufmann House ‘Fallingwater’, Pennsylvania, USA
Organic architecture is a philosophy of architecture which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.
