Contemporary Asian Pools and Gardens. Chami Jotisalikorn

      the new asian Pools and Gardens:

       Bringing Harmony into the Home

      Today's tropical garden is constantly pushing the boundaries of contemporary landscape and design while still retaining its essentially Asian heritage and personality. Although inspiration may come from Balinese, Chinese, Japanese or Thai models, the contemporary Asian garden creates its own thoroughly modern idiom by combining traditional elements with bold industrial materials like steel, granite, slate and concrete.

      The design of any living space is greatly enhanced by having well thought out landscaping. And whereas the garden was once considered an afterthought to the design of a house, "a place to be viewed rather than to be participated in," according to landscape architect Karl Princic of Bali-based Karl Princic Design, today's modern Asian gardens play a pivotal role in the overall design of the house.

      With his Barcelona Pavilion designed for the International Exhibition in Barcelona in 1929, Mies van der Rohe was one of the first architects to incorporate the concept of indoors and outdoors with his open spaces that merged seamlessly with the surrounding landscape.

      Perhaps one of the most important developments in recent years is the resurgence of this concept of the garden being another room in the house, which has been explored by a number of architects including John Pawson and Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, for whom the garden was "a series of rooms seen in succession or as a whole." His architecture was inseparable from the surrounding environment His garden at Lunuganga and his house in Colombo are cases in point.

      More and more people are taking the time to think as much about the design of their gardens as they are about the design of their homes. This stems in some part from the explosion of spa resorts in Asia. These havens of tranquility offer luxurious escapes where nature is definitely part of the nurturing process.

      Renowned Mexican architect Lu is Barragan referred to himself as a landscape architect In Contemporary Architects he wrote, "I believe that architects should design gardens to be used, as much as the houses they build, to develop a sense of beauty and the taste and inclination toward the fine arts and other spiritual values. Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake."

      Garden design is progressively emulating architecture and art In a way we are urbanizing our gardens and more importantly, as the following pages show, gardens are moving into the house and vice versa. As Karl Princic says, "the essence of garden design is the successful blurring of boundaries between outdoors and indoors. It is now difficult to imagine any project without the influence of landscape."

      While homeowners ultimately seek beautiful landscapes, they are also demanding gardens that are easy to maintain, hence the introduction of streamlined gardens.

      We are seeing fewer flower beds-restraint in the variety of plants often focuses the attention and enhances a space-and more sculpted gardens that adhere to the Japanese principle of shakkeii, or "borrowed scenery,"-a concept that draws the surrounding landscape into the garden The principles of shakkeii work well regardless of the size of the garden, and are therefore ideally suited to urban living.

      One of the most recurring themes is the existence of water. According to Stan and Geri Lee, the owners of Singapore-based landscape design company Watermount Gardens, "water is a key element in the Asian garden. Incorporating a water feature adds life to the garden whether it is in the form of a pond, a simple or elaborate water feature or rock pool."