December 01, 2015
Every now and then I suppose we find ourselves in places that seem pleasing and yet awkward. This I presume is one of them. In a Phaidon publication that maps 250 gardens , over 600 odd years, we find ourselves sitting in the company of ShahJehan, Andre Le Notre, Geoffery Jellicoe,Thomas Church,C.Th Sorenson, Burle Marx, Luis Barragan, Repton, Paxton, Olmstead et all. This is down right embarrassing- since we would hardly qualify by miles. And yet there we are…
How does it happen? I suppose an effort at stock taking; at the desire to sort of have an updated list of all the gardens that matter till date. Even so, we suppose its rather difficult to say that one can club the work of say Sorenson, or an Olmsetad with a modern project; however good it is. After all a lot of these projects have been there and stood tall for hundreds of years, and stood the test of time- hardly what our work has done when compared with that time scale.
Nonetheless, its a good feeling and hence here we are sharing it.
Introduction by Madison Cox:
The index of projects.
The flier listing the designers .
Missing in the list above, but in the book are two other recent Indian projects; the late Prof. Shaheers, Sanskriti Kendra is one of them.
Our project below.
Halfway Retreat
Ahmedabad; Gujarat
Also below some of the many projects that we truly admire which are part of the book.
Skogskyrkogarden (Woodland Cementry) Enskede, Stockholm, Sweden
Erik Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz
Alhambra & Generalife, Granada, Andalucia, Spain
Various
Pool Garden, Sonoma County, California, USA
Thomas Church
Cottesbrooke Hall, Northampton, Northamptonshire, UK
Robert Weir Schultz, Geoffrey Jellicoe, Sylvia Crome, James Alexander Sinclair, Angela Collins, Arne Maynard
Stowe, Buckinghamshire, UK
Charles Bridgeman, Sir John Vanbrugh, William Kent, Lancelot ‘Capability Brown’
Garden of Peace, UNESCO Head Quarters, Paris, France
Isamu Noguchi
Sitio Roberto Burle Marx, Barra de Guaratiba, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Roberto Burle Marx
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, London, UK
William Kent, Lancelot ‘Capability Brown’ and others
And this one below particularly strikes a emotional chord. Its by C. Th Sorenson, who taught Prof. Bhagwat; someone he looked upto along with Brian Hackett as his teacher; and the project below- one he talked about often ! and we could never find good pictures to see it- and now here are the pictures and Prof. Bhagwat is not there.
De Runde Haver, (The Oval Gardens), Naerum, Zealand, Denmark
Carl Theodor Sorensen
And this one, which in one of our earlier blogs we called, ” The Taj Mahal of landscapes”. Its a fantastic project.
Australian Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Taylor Cullity Lethlean, Landscape Architects with Paul Thompson
And ofcourse the one below.
High Line, Manhattan, New York City, USA
James Corner, Diller Scofidio & Renfro Piet Oudolf
And the one below, a project that has fascinated us now for many months and its narrative has made us question many times the meaning of our work.
Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, Kent, UK
Derek Jarman
And ofcourse this one by some one we love, and call a friend !
Jardin Los Vilos, Coquimbo, Chile
Juan Grimm
The Gardeners Garden.
Phaidon Press Limited.
2014.
