“The landscape is never complete: neither built nor unbuilt, it is perpetually under construction. This is why the conventional dichotomy between the natural and the artificial or man-made components of the landscape is so problematic”
- Roberto da Matta quoted by Peter Jacobs, Echoes of Paradise, Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creations and Interpretations.
Landscapes and cities are viewed as seemingly being dichotomous. Yet both are critical to the existence of the other - cities and people on landscape / nature not just for survival, but for shared identity, meaning and dwelling, and in current times, as Peter Jacobs puts it “sustainability of landscapes needs more than conservation or even restoration – it requires human creativity and the magic of art to provide meaningful and publicly valued landscapes.”
The studio looked at Ahmedabad city and its larger landscape setting. As a first step, students visited sites from Gandhinagar (north) to Pariej wetland (south); and from Khari river (east) to Nalsarovar (west). This first-hand data was correlated with secondary sources of information to generate a large landscape map. Each student subsequently looked at one landscape network and investigated it in detail leading to a project.
