CLIENTS

Matrimandir

Features:

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Use of harmonious forms found in nature, different elements and just a few materials in a wide range of sizes and arrangements, these gardens were meant to create experience of conscious exploration through playful and dynamic movement used initially for self-awareness and towards the last garden, to self-quieting and self-finding.

Design Brief:

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Garden of Unexpected to be place for children. Not an ordinary playground, but a place of wonder and discovering the unexpected, a place of reversed reality. Existing contours, local flora and fauna as well as climate and sustainability to be responded to within a given specified budget.

Design Intervention:

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The Gardens were seen as an extension in nature for the same purpose which Matrimandir itself holds- that of finding one’s own true centre and re-establishing the link between the individual and the transcendental, by means of one’s inherent nature. 

With this intent, the gardens were designed to use a child’s natural curiosity and sense of wonder to lead it to find the inner vastness and quietude. A flowing element throughout the length of the gardens showed up either as pathway or as wall and engaged the child in different ways becoming a symbolic interphase between material and subtle planes; entering into or crossing which is an experience by itself. Besides the use of engaging landscape elements and flora which heightened each of the senses individually, the aspect of a contrasting quiet space was simultaneously integrated, to provide a pause for assimilation and growth. The use of mirrors, water and stones giving a vivid and variegated experience and the coming back with different ways of self-finding again and again through an explorative engagement was the element of unexpected.

Our take away:

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Living in Auroville has been an experience of growth and a progressive self-finding while breaking the set mental patterns time and again. Each of us has a child within us that is waiting to explore, fulfil its curiosity and learn anew while each time travelling a different plane of consciousness. Working on Garden of Unexpected was a way of translating all this learning over the years into an architectural formation that would provide all the required information for exploration, assimilation and growth. We believe that architecture can communicate its intent. The intent here was close to our heart and we were able to give our all in a spirit of sincerity and offering, without an attachment to result. It was our offering of Gratitude to Auroville, Matrimandir and to the journey of our souls.