Landscape – Page 5 – akshay kaul and associates

Garden of Great Arc

The design proposal envisaged the creation of a unique Urban Park which would celebrate the fascinating tale of The Great Arc within the natural matrix of the Survey of India Site in Dehradun. The story of the Great Arc was to be brought to life by the symbolic representation of the Great Trigonometrical Survey in the design of the Park. The north-south linear configuration of the Garden of The Great Arc was to be reminder of the journey undertaken by the intrepid surveyors from the southern tip of the Indian Peninsula to the Northern reaches of the subcontinent at the base of the Himalayas. The triangulated pathways were designed to connect at the apex of the triangles in specialized small gardens. These were also to become locations for specially commisioned sculptures depicting the story of The Great Arc.

TERI (Tata Energy Research Institute)

Islamic University Science and Technology

This was a competition design that we won along with Stephane Paumier Architects for Islamic University of Science and Technology, Jammu and Kashmir. The site had two parts one for housing and the main campus and is about 100 acres. The main feature was to bring the elements of landscape of Kashmir into the gardens in a stylized way while addressing the issues of water management, drainage, and celebrating the poetics of water through the gardens design. The building were designed as a new typology that took into consideration surrounding context of the mountains, climate, sun and shadows through the year and working with traditional typology for present time and construction materials.

Civil lines

As you enter the gate is a water fall and a screen of plants that separates the garden and the outside world. The sound of water directs the people towards the pathway leading to the house – you pause here and then turn to see a sculpture sitting there waiting for you. As you walk along the path, sound of overflow from the pool directs you to the house. The stone lattice screens the pool from the walkway yet the lattice teases you to find out what is behind. The screens, pathway, light lanterns are all in sand stone.

Nirula Farm

Pahalgam Club

Ravi Nanda Farm

This is a farm house where people live as a joint family. The house and landscape followed every possible principle in Vastu Shastra. We integrated our environmental concerns within those principles. We brought into the gardens a pallete of plants that helped to restore the ecological cycle nourish the soil, bring back insect life, butterflies, birds, night insects and more. We fixed the soil further by sending back every drop of water into the ground to recharge the replenishing water cycle. We kept only a small part as turf for occasional parties and a large part of the gardens as agrarian landscape, for herbs and plants that are found in folk and traditional medicine. We saved all existing trees even though we had to worked with altered grade due to Vastu.

Vineet Sethi Farm

Spread on 2.5 acres this project came to us with earlier interventions of two landscape architects. So we had a more predetermined landscape in which we had to modify certain elements,
create new gardens and planting changes through addition and alteration in existing pallette. The lawns were an existing part of landscape and through planting we created spatial definition and added character to the front and rear garden. In addition four smaller garden were created each with a distinct character including the arrival court sculptures inspired by Henry Moore.

Kamal Poddar Residence

The single-family home is in a semi- arid region near Delhi, India in a gated development of varying size. This site is 2100sq m roughly half an acre lot at the end of the cul-de-sac with pre-determined building height and open space regulation. The building is placed approximately in the centre and has open space on four sides. The landscape is designed in a way to integrate the building utilities like underground copper pipes below the West/Front lawn to cool the building. The irrigation of the lawn supports in this process. The pathways, drive ways and front yard have gravel as finish so that utility chambers and underground pipeline that run below them can be easily maintained without disturbing the landscape. Rainwater recharge system is also integrated with pathways and the landscape in all the four open spaces. Vegetation is primarily conceived to provide for every day needs of the house hold; flowers and holy basil for morning prayers, herbs for cooking, fruit trees that grow in the region, fragrant shrubs, flowering trees for pollination and shade.

Sadika Farm House

This is a residential project on an one acre lot with a joint family already living on it. The client wanted us to redesign the existing landscape with issues of water accumulation in the norther part of site, grey water discharge directly and its accumulation, a landscape without any character. They wanted a landscape that they would like to use – where the father and son would walk every morning or night and discuss work and and life. The earlier landscape had existing trees many of which we did not like but as is with any project we typically do not remove any tree. So we worked with the limitation of existing structure of the earlier landscape and enhanced it . The landscape celebrates and integrates rainwater harvesting and solves all issues of drainage and recharges every drop of water that falls in the garden. Waste water is biologically treated now from the kitchen and the septic tank and reuses in the agrarian landscape. With stone crafts people to bring the stone crafts into the Indian Landscape as paving material, as screens/ jallis, and in various other ways in the landscape, area for the lawn is minimized, naturalized or native shrubs are planted, lighting form an important part of the landscape. The clients enjoy and use the landscape and the gardens more than ever before and every member of the house finds a way to partake with it. The children have put the tables against the windows and now the clients don’t want to do anything in the interiors which will “spoil the view of the gardens from inside”. In the second phase the client wanted us to do the interiors to keep the ‘sacred’ experience of landscape undisturbed.