Landscapes (Under)Designed

It was just before the pandemic, last year, that I had visited the project site with my colleague. It was a natural woodland along a busy street of the city. The intent was to design a linear park for the neighbourhood. To me, this was one of those many seemingly simple projects, with an underlying sense of experimentation.

The many existing mature native trees on the site offered a large shade canopy over a thick layer of dry leaves acting as natural mulch. All a landscape designer was left to do was to work around these beautiful trees and carve out some minimalist playful spaces amidst this natural environment, only to make it slightly more usable. The purest design intention was to only provide the right stimuli for children, without taking away the character of the place.

The field of landscape design, I believe, balances itself carefully on a fine line between the natural and the man-made. While architecture bends more towards the man-made, landscape needs to willingly swing towards the natural side.

With the addition of locally made simple elements for play and fitness under a cluster of existing trees with natural dry-leaf mulch underneath and a wide shaded shared path following the linear tree lines along the centre of the site, for walking and cycling, the place was transformed into a simple but activated open space. This minimalist quality of landscape satisfies all the basic needs of a neighbourhood park, providing small active physical play pockets with social interaction nodes, leaving room for imaginative and sensory play, making it all the more inclusive.

We did not have to give an invitation to the birds when the place was officially open! They already have their homes in those tall trees, with the evening sun and summer breeze playing hide-n-seek through the branches. The children just seemed to follow the wind and sunshine and birdsong, and within a few days, the linear open space became a favourite.

It's such little gestures that liven the urban fabric. Landscape isn't about manicured lawns, expensive water features or bright exotic flowers! All the children need is a shaded spot amidst trees to weave their colourful imaginations through.

What COVID has silently taught us is how to live a fuller life only with what is absolutely necessary and sufficient, in spite of the many emptinesses it has created in our daily lives. As a landscape architect, I wish to fill this ‘understory’ layer around big existing trees with lively stories of many-an ‘under’designed landscape!