Landscape as an art of slow returns: Sky Garden by Kunaal Maniar, sixteen years on

Nature takes its time. The process of 'designing' a natural landscape, in its virtue, extends beyond the mere resolution of ideas. Their execution is then only the genesis of long-winded journey. The 'designer', the interventionist, simply plants the seeds.

Sixteen years since the Mumbai-based landscape architect Kunaal Maniar’s eponymous studio planted Sky Garden at the terrace of a high-rise development—the CJ House in Mumbai—the landscape design has unfolded in dramatic, exciting ways. For Maniar, the growth has been both anticipated and organic, revealing the deep and graceful enrichment that is characteristic of natural processes, onset with the passage of time.

The garden design—conscious of its position and the spatial dichotomy between sky and earth—was conceived as an exploration of the idea of a ‘borrowed landscape’. It stems from an attempt to create a space that feels rooted despite its vertical disposition. Originally developed in collaboration with Indian architect Vistasp Kharas, during his tenure with Talati and Panthaky, both the landscape and the architecture display a responsiveness to their surrounding context—dynamic and ever-changing as is to be expected from Mumbai—emerging foregrounded to the Arabian Sea.

Smaller elements of the overall landscape design scheme evoke Balinese traditions, featuring a rich palette of tropical plants and moss-laden decor elements that mediate between the built and the unbuilt, between enclosure and exposure. “Rather than recreating a Balinese garden, we translated its spirit—harmony with nature, sensory richness and a strong sense of place,” Maniar tells STIR. “We used generous soil depths, sunken slabs and a carefully selected plant palette to establish a sense of permanence and ecological richness,” he continues. The landscape is designed to subtly frame the surrounding seascape, especially over time, while the central pool serves as a gradual visual transition between the garden and the sea beyond.

The configuration of the open space is defined by mature frangipani trees, originally transplanted to the terrace as physical and symbolic anchors of the garden—a reverence to the spirit of Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa’s immersive landscapes. The feat also exemplifies the merits of incorporating discussions on landscape planning as part of the early design development stages, an approach that facilitated various structural provisions, including sunken slabs that were specially designed for bearing the weight and growth of the mature trees. “Transplanting trees weighing up to 1,500 kg onto the rooftop required close coordination with structural engineers to ensure the building could support the loads”, Maniar remarks, “while detailed wind studies informed anchoring systems and planting strategies that would allow the trees to thrive despite increased wind exposure at that height.”

Nature’s organicity is fundamental to the discipline of landscape architecture. By virtue of careful planning and foresight, Sky Garden by Kunal Maniar and Associates manages to envelope a similar range of variances despite being somewhat restricted by the stringent built mass of the high-rise construction, typical of Mumbai's urbanscape. “Sixteen years on, the garden has reaffirmed that landscapes are shaped as much by time as by design,” Maniar shares with STIR. “While we anticipated the growth of the planting, what has been most rewarding is seeing how the garden has evolved in ways we could never fully predict—developing its own ecological relationships, character and rhythms. It serves as a reminder that the role of the designer is not to control nature, but to create the conditions for it to thrive.” 

Project Details

Name: Sky Garden
Location: Mumbai
Typology: Terrace Garden
Architect: Kunal Maniar and Associates
Collaborators: Vistasp Kharas (architectural design)