The 21st-Century Islamic Garden: Connecting the Present to the Past

Abstract

Exploring the expression of landscape identity in the 21st century, the article asks how garden and landscape types so strongly associated with historical periods and places in the Islamic world, such as the chahar bagh, or terraced garden, can inspire new contemporary landscape design to push design ideas forward rather than merely imitate the past. In the tension between a historic identity that derives from past visual traditions and the desire for a modern identity that expresses new social values, do certain qualities mark a space as belonging to an Islamic historical tradition? The article does not provide a survey of historic Islamic gardens or the many new Islamic gardens and parks built in recent decades. Its aim is first to explore the tension between tradition and innovation within the history of Islamic gardens and then to sample five contemporary sites that have addressed tradition and innovation in different ways in the modern era. The article ultimately asks how contemporary design draws from but also moves beyond historical precedents.