KUNAL MANIAR

The AD 100 architect's latest project is a massive terrace garden teeming with native indigenous plants, creating a microclimate of its own and a green sanctuary for the homeowners right in the middle of the city.

- RAJASHREE BALARAM

A 6,000-square-foot terrace garden jutting out from the fourth-floor apartment of a high-rise in South Mumbai is not exactly commonplace-especially not when the green haven stands suspended like a jewel in the heart of a concrete jungle.

For landscape architect Kunal Maniar, the project was a feat of sorts and also a minor spectacle in its making. Mechanical cranes lumbered below the apartment for days to haul-four floors up-full-grown trees and shrubs of moringa, kamini (murraya exotica), and frangipani as well as heaps of stone boulders. Of course, by then, Maniar had already spent a couple of months overzealously studying and confirming the load-bearing capacity of the terrace with a team of structural engineers. (To put things in perspective, the planters lining the periphery alone are five feet deep and wide!) "No matter how much one talks about how we must try to cultivate a lot of greenery around us, says Maniar, "one cannot be reckless and design a grand, water-guzzling terrace garden in a city where so many people still queue up at the public water taps for their daily needs."