Marcos' Garden

CO²

Date

2017-2018

Location

Madrid (Spain)

Type

Residential

Trees

Area

916 m2

Status

Built

Gardens are for people. This is the title of Thomas Church's book from 1955, highlighting the importance of designing gardens to be used by people, not just as a decorative or aesthetic element. Church emphasizes that gardens should be spaces whose design takes into account the needs and desires of the people who will inhabit them.

When we began designing the garden for Marcos, we established clear premises with him that prioritized functionality above any other consideration, so maintenance had to be limited to certain days each month.

Since the garden was intended for private and personalized use, specific areas were designed, such as an outdoor shower that connects directly to the dressing room, as well as a heated pool and jacuzzi. In addition, the garden design focused on its use throughout the year, considering that all the rooms in the house had direct access to the outside. This focus on using the garden 365 days a year resulted in a design that maximized versatility and comfort in the use of the outdoor space.

You can check out the text written by Daniel Valera during the pandemic inspired by Church's book: Gardens are for people.

We cannot think of a universal garden, but rather a garden that adapts to the needs and particularities of each type of family.

A GARDEN FOR EVERY TYPE OF FAMILY

The landscape architect not only imagines and creates physical spaces, but also shapes the way people experience those spaces and relate to them. Gaston Bachelard, in his work The Poetics of Space, suggests that spaces are places where emotions are experienced and memories are built. According to Bachelard, every space has its own identity and memory, and it is through our experience and relationship with them that they become lived and meaningful places for us.

If we conceive the garden as a social construction—interpreted and lived individually by each person—we can affirm that its design and planning must begin with an understanding of the complexity and diversity of human experience. We cannot think of a universal garden, but rather of a garden that adapts to the needs and particularities of each type of family.

A GARDEN THAT GENERATES ENERGY

Marcos’s garden is a good example of how engineering can serve landscape design. In this project, every detail has been carefully considered to reduce environmental impact as much as possible and to transform the space into a self-sufficient environment.

The installation of photovoltaic panels on the pergola has been a key decision. Thanks to them, the energy required to heat the jacuzzi water is generated, allowing it to be used at any time of the day or night. In addition, the installed cover has the capacity to retain the heat generated during the day, enabling it to be maintained throughout the night without the need for costly energy storage systems, thereby reducing waste generation in line with the project’s sustainability philosophy.

ABOUT THOMAS CHURCH

Thomas Dolliver Church (1902–1978) was one of the leading pioneers of modern landscape architecture in the United States. While McHarg approached territory at a large scale through ecology, Church focused on the domestic garden as a contemporary space, closely linked to architecture and everyday life.

He worked primarily in California and understood, earlier than many, that the garden should be a natural extension of the house. He integrated the clean lines of modern architecture with outdoor spaces that were fluid, functional, and elegant. His gardens were neither symmetrical nor rigid: they were organic, open, and designed for both the climate and social life.

One of his most emblematic projects is the Donnel Garden in Sonoma (1948), with its kidney-shaped swimming pool that became almost an icon of Californian modernism. There, his way of working is clearly visible: soft geometry, a direct relationship between interior and exterior, and vegetation that is structured yet free.

He also published Gardens Are for People (1955), where he argued that a garden should respond to four principles: function, structure, simplicity, and scale. Nothing superfluous. Everything designed for real use.