From the Heart
As landscape designers, whether or not we admit to it, we do create emotional responses from our clients.
In a sense, we are constantly stimulating emotional responses from our clients as we meander through a myriad of options, ultimately arriving at a place and time that is satisafying to all - form and function, environmental and economic. When we succeed, we manage to tap into our clients emotional experiences and transport them along with the design and when we fail, somehow we have not created that emotional bridge that is a conduit between the clients past and present and where they want to be in the future.
The first thing I do when meeting with clients, is to get a sense of the things that are important to them- aesthetic as well as non-aesthetic. This begins with a casual exploration of design elements that have positively influenced choices they have made from early childhood through the adult years. Art, furniture, music and yes, even the cars they drive can and do tell you a lot about stylistic preferences. There were certainly elements from my childhood years growing up in South Africa that evoked strong emotions in me- the smell of the land after a hard rainstorm, the lashing winds off the sea and the sea swept beaches, beautiful vegetation and animals- all of which I still experience to this day even-though I have not lived there for 28 plus years. As designers, we need to be intuitive and try and take advantage of our clients emotional memories from childhood through the adult years and create design elements that emphasise these positi
vely.
It is true that we have to design with our eyes, but I advocate that in addition, designing from the soul of the heart will unveil a unique connection between you and your client and result in a collaborative landscape design that is an overwhelming success!