Why do we design a landscape?

We, humans, believe that protecting our natural and undisturbed landscapes would assist in their protection. The boundaries (defined or not defined) that we have created would limit our access and in turn help in sustaining these areas. But this is arguable. Built or natural landscapes both are prone to continued disturbances generated by people or other sources.

Humans have always been a part of nature. Although we have adapted ourselves to a different environment. This adaptability has not eradicated the instincts of belonging to the wilds.

Therefore, it becomes important to bring back this part of nature to the ‘now’ world of humans in a way that is readable and more acceptable. Design landscapes help in bringing this notion. Humans of the 21st century have evolved from their ancestors to such a degree that their means of perceiving landscapes have been altered and modified. Our wild beings have disconnected from our wilderness. Designing landscapes brings in this connectivity. It forms a language for the natural environments to be more legible to humans.

"People will not protect the places they don’t love"

In a dense city where human-nature interaction is limited, people incline toward any visual landscape hue. When any landscape is designed to meet the visual needs of humans it rises in value. People feel a sense of belonging and a responsibility to protect and conserve. A designed landscape brings in aesthetic significance that heightens the human experience. Similarly, messy landscapes are acceptable only when they are contained within visible tidy frames. Thus, designed landscapes become readable, legible, clear, and comprehensible for humans.

Designing landscapes also becomes important in cases where landscapes have been through extreme conditions and events ecologically, climatically, or by other human/ nonhuman processes. In these cases too designers and architects become catalysts in changing and restoring these landscapes through design. All of these only aim for similar results- humans to coexist with nature.