Landscape is all around us. We don’t see it for what it is. It’s just there, the way nature is just there. We take it for granted unless something explicit declares human intervention. For this reason I believe the promise of fame drives designers to leave their mark by designing loud. Regardless of the type of project. If your designer is doing this, you might have a problem.
We will come back to this.
This post was inspired by fashion, when model Bhavitha Mandava walked onto the carpet at this year’s Met Gala, wearing what appeared to be a white tank, faded denim, and a sheer zip-up. This was not Met Gala standard by any stretch of the imagination.
Or was it?
Her garments, it turned out, were both everyday and haute couture. What appeared to be denim was silk muslin, processed to mimic it — a trompe l’oeil requiring many hours of work by highly skilled ateliers. A great deal of effort went into making the appearance of effortlessness.
It was an image that jarred against the expected spectacle of the Met Gala. Yet there is no denying the power of the statement. One young woman in something seemingly everyday — but actually not — turned heads and ignited debate. Quite heated debate. Inconspicuous luxury had arrived.
Designing simple is risky. Most times it pays off. Sometimes it doesn’t. Once, I was fired for simple design. The then-CEO of a major development company took exception to a proposal I had put forward for a waterfront project. It was an embarrassing moment. There was nothing offensive in the design — nothing spectacular either, just a sound application of the universal principles of design. Interestingly, a few years later I reconnected with my energetic critic when his new employer hired us for several waterfront projects of their own. We became good friends.
Much of the work in creating a great place is unglamorous: drainage, soil, plants. Done well, none of it calls attention to itself. The true value of design is often realised years after the project is built.
So, if landscape design is by nature unseen, how would you recognise good design when you’re looking at it?
It’s a fair question.
Ask your designer not what the space will look like, but what it will feel like — at 8am on a Tuesday, years from now when the trees have grown. Ask what brings people back again and again. Rely less on the render style and ask about the everyday experience of that place.
Landscape design is the design of experience. What people carry with them afterward isn’t a singular showy feature — it’s something they felt. Simplicity is a powerful way to create that, but it takes confidence from everyone: from the designer to the client.
Mandava’s statement hit a note because it was new — a genuine disruption of the expected. It could not be repeated with the same force. Revolutionary gestures belong to a moment.
Except when they don’t.
In landscape design, the everyday is a revolution for everyday.
The Met Gala moments exist — the civic landmark, the signature public space — and they matter. But they are the exception. For the most part the brief requires quieter work: places where people walk to work, where children play, where someone sits for ten minutes and feels, without knowing why, that the world is in reasonable order. Find designers who do that well, consistently, without fanfare — and together you build something no single gesture can match: a revolution of enduring good places.