husainabad tank & clock tower
kuriya ghat “chikan park” ambedkar memorial chattar manzil & farhat baksh
jama masjid chota imambara lakshman tila bara imambara
historic complex riverfront plaza riverfront orchards wetlands floodplain farm inhabited area unprogrammed riverfront existing riverfront recreation
moti mahal begum hazrat mahal park
shah najat imambara & botanical gardens
tomb of nawab saadat ali khan residency la martiniere estate
VILAYAITI BAGH
raised walkways and plantings. This articulation of spaces would create settings for recreational activities, a form of adaptive reuse of the garden in keeping with contemporary cultural needs. The 19 th century garden was a private enclave meant primarily for passive recreation of the elite. For it to function as a public park, new ways of using open spaces need to be accommodated. In other words, garden traditions have to be regenerated and reinvented on a heritage site. For example, activities that engage the public at large – playfield, fruit picking in mango groves, marriage and other celebrations in tents
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5. Gomti Riverfront Heritage Corridor.
Although Gomti is no longer an edge or a path, it remains the only venue from where large stretches of the historic and the contemporary city can be glimpsed and accessed. The last decade has witnessed vigorous efforts by the state government to ‘beautify’ the riverfront but missing in these endeavors has been a conscious effort to celebrate Lucknow’s cultural heritage. Gomti can be visualised as an aquatic heritage trail with boat rides to historic buildings and gardens arrayed along its banks. Vilayaiti Bagh can be the last destination in a boat ride down the river intended to acquaint the visitor with Lucknow’s history and its garden heritage.
installed periodically in the terraced lawn – should be permissible. The garden would offer ample opportunities for passive recreation – taking a stroll, enjoying long views of river and solitary contemplation of
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Students in Design Workshops LA 336/438 in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign developed design alternatives for restoration of Vilayaiti Bagh in Spring ’08.
nature. Mango and citrus groves could be planted in the upper terrace while lower terraces could have brilliantly coloured flower garden and moonlight garden with aromatic night flowering plants, to keep the views open to the river. Since the site gradually slopes down to the river, terracing would not only create long viewsheds to the other bank and surroundings but also water channels, fed by rainwater harvested in storage tanks and/or wells can irrigate the garden with gravity flow. The garden, however, would be subject to flooding when the Gomti rises. Terracing close to
BIBLIOGRAPHY i. Moynihan, Elizabeth (ed.) The Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at the Taj Mahal. University of Washington Press, 2001; Landscape and Conservation Projects. Special Issue of Journal of Landscape Architecture, India, vol. 5(1), 2007. ii. D. Fairchild Ruggles. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. iii. Moore, Charles, William Mitchell, and William Turnbull Jr. The Poetics of Gardens. MIT Press, 1988. iv. Sinha, Amita. “Decadence, Mourning and Revolution - Facets of Nineteenth Century Landscape of Lucknow, India,” Landscape Research, U.K., No. 2 (Spring 1996): 123-136. v. William Howard Russell. My Diary in India, in the year 1858-59. London: Routledge, 1860. vi. Miller, Naomi and Kathryn Gleason (eds.) The Archaeology of Garden and Field. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. vii Nagpal, Swati and Amita Sinha. “The Gomti Riverfront in Lucknow, India: Revitalization of a Cultural Heritage Landscape”, Architecture+Design, India, June 2008, vol. XXV, no. 6, pp.58-66.
the river, similar to ghats, can confine and retain water in a small area of the site, leaving rest of the garden less prone to damage caused by high water levels.
Amita Sinha is a Professor at the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA.