Skip To Main Content
Issue 60 - The Kitchen and Bathroom Issue

Issue 60

The Kitchen and Bathroom Issue

HABITUS has always stood ahead of the rest with a dedicated Kitchen and Bathroom issue of exemplar standards. For issue 60 we have taken it up a notch with our Guest Editor the extraordinary, queen of kitchen design, Sarah-Jane Pyke of Arent&Pyke, speaking directly to Kitchen and Bathroom design with some increadable insights.

Order Issue

A Product of

Beyond wild expectations: This book on gardens will both inspire and challenge
Design StoriesTimothy Alouani-Roby

Beyond wild expectations: This book on gardens will both inspire and challenge

The Avant Gardens, a new book published by gestalten, not only provides some beautiful inspiration but also challenges assumptions about what a garden is and what it can do for a home.


As a concept, the garden lies in a strange liminal zone, somewhere between the natural and manmade. Sometimes they are designed to evoke nature and even wilderness, a chance to bring greenery and vegetation into dense urban settings, for example.

At other times, gardens are set up in a strict juxtaposition with nature. They are used to express a supposed mastery over the non-human world, a chance to impose rational forms onto a non-rational canvas.

The Avant Gardens: Visionaries and Gardens Beyond Wild Expectations presents case studies from around the world precisely in order to blur those lines between the natural and the cultivated. Wherever your inclinations lie, and however the book might challenge them, there is a garden here to inspire design almost anywhere.

Oudolf Field, photograph by Jason Ingram.

“A garden is never finished, it is never static, and it is always in conversation with nature,” writes John Tebbs in the introduction. “If you leave this book having learned one thing, I hope it is this: to be in the garden is to be connected to something bigger.”

It’s a thought-provoking framing that captures the substance behind and between the beautiful photography that features page after page. Some of the content presents what might be considered the more traditional, respectable and recognisable types of gardens. Part of the house at Great Dixter in the UK, for instance, dates back to the 15th century, yet showcases a mode of experimentation relative to its era.

Nant-y-Bedd, photograph by Jason Ingram.

Elsewhere, Marrakech’s Jardin Majorelle – with its stunning blues and yellows – is a notable inclusion, not surprising given the rich history of refined gardens in North Africa and the Islamic world more generally. Other case studies cross continents to provide alternative inspiration from places such as California, with Flamingo Estate in Los Angeles.

Indeed, just about every continent is covered. In Australia, for example, a close look is taken at The Australian Garden located in Victoria. The chapter opens: “Colonial Australia has always had a dual relationship with the landscape it occupies. It was once seen as awe-inspiring, and as something to be subdued, made to conform to European expectations of landscape.” It introduces a set of themes and concerns that speak to the whole book.

Flamingo Estate, photograph by Christian Högstedt.

Japan and India provide other striking examples of different types and traditions of gardening across Asia. Each case study is selected to draw out and reflect the shifting cultures of its locale. Above all, The Avant Gardens is a celebration of how gardens can make us feel, the creativity they embody and, given their relevance to climate change and biodiversity, the capacity of gardens to challenge how we think and design.

The Avant Gardens: Visionaries and Gardens Beyond Wild Expectations is published and edited by gestalten with John Tebbs and Robert Klanten, and is available here.


About the Author

Timothy Alouani-Roby

Timothy Alouani-Roby is the Editor of Indesignlive and Habitus Living. Having worked in elite professional sport for over a decade, he retrained in architecture at the University of Sydney, adding to previous degrees in philosophy, politics and English literature. Timothy is based in Gadigal-Sydney, but spends much of his time among the moors of both Northern England and Marrakech.

Tags

AustraliaBookbookseuropegardengestaltenHome ArchitectureHouse ArchitectureMarrakechold


Related Articles
Issue 60 - The Kitchen and Bathroom Issue

Issue 60

The Kitchen and Bathroom Issue

HABITUS has always stood ahead of the rest with a dedicated Kitchen and Bathroom issue of exemplar standards. For issue 60 we have taken it up a notch with our Guest Editor the extraordinary, queen of kitchen design, Sarah-Jane Pyke of Arent&Pyke, speaking directly to Kitchen and Bathroom design with some increadable insights.

Order Issue