Durva Chandrashekhar Kamat

LA4022

Urban life doesn’t pause after sunset—cafés glow, streets hum, and neighborhoods breathe in a different rhythm—so why should our parks retreat into darkness? This project reimagines the neighborhood park as a living, responsive nighttime landscape that aligns with the changing moods and sensory experiences of the evening. Transitions between spaces are choreographed and imagined to reflect the temporal rhythm of night, using lighting not merely for visibility but to shape emotional atmospheres: warm glows for gathering, soft gradients for pause, and dim pathways that draw one inward. Planting is curated for texture, scent, and nocturnal bloom, engaging senses that become more active as vision recedes. Understanding that sound acts as a subtle spatial layer—rustling foliage, ambient tones, and distant murmurs create immersive environments. Circulation can be designed to be intentionally slowed through curved paths, tactile materials, and thresholds that prepare the body and mind for the next spatial mood. Each space—be it a storytelling alcove, night market, or sensory garden—responds to a particular social or sensory need of the nighttime city. In this way, the park becomes not just a physical terrain but a temporal one, inviting people to engage with the night as an active and layered experience, where transitions are as meaningful as destinations and darkness becomes a medium for reflection, intimacy, and play.