Design with Nature

This week we read chapters from the landmark book; 'Design with nature' by Ian McHarg for our discussion this week. In this book he recollects his childhood memories, where he was struck by the contrast between a city and wilderness. He loathes the grey city in comparison to the green wilderness.

We started the discussion by sharing our personal experiences with nature. For Lance, it was the memory of his childhood years where he played with the neighborhood kids on the lawn by his grandma's house and ran wild but safe on the tree sheltered sidewalk. Now, those trees are gone. For Ian, the wide open desert by his home was his ground to enjoy ride with his friends but it was taken to build new homes, for Pin the sweet memory of the lilies in the lake in palm of the mountain valley was a treasure, for Cai the open countryside, and for Rambha the peaceful streets of European villages at night was a memoir seldom found in a city. For me, our journey to north Himalayas was discovering a lost paradise which I was so unaware of in my city Delhi. It was like coming back to home, where I belong. I was particularly impressed by simple yet joyous life of people there.

Modern cities have made us lose this connection with nature and with oneself. All noise, crowd, congestion, haste, hurry, pollution of the city has seeped inside us. It puts a vacuum around us, keeping us away from all that's real, true and natural.  Ian McHarg very strongly criticizes planners, designers and engineers for this folly. He argues that cities will continue to grow and expand with the needs of humanity but that doesn't mean that it has to be at cost of nature. With a deep concern for natural environment, he gives us a method to extract areas worth urbanization from ecologically sensitive areas. In today's times of rapid growth, where more than 2/3rd of the world is predicted to live in cities by 2050, we can’t afford to continue the endless sprawl lest it should leave us with a earth void of all nature and beauty. McHarg's call for designers and planners to design with nature is the need of the age, to be heeded seriously for a safe future.

I would like to end with few lines, which come to my mind as I recollect today's discussion;

nature creates memories

nature evokes emotion 
nature is connection to oneself
deep inside, we are one with nature