A landscape architect offers tips on how to build spaces that offer the peace and comfort of a luxurious green home. As residents of the post-pandemic world, how do you define luxury? In an urban Indian city, access to green space and good air quality are quickly becoming luxury commodities that only the wealthiest can afford.

This World Environment Day, here's a guide to help you design and plan your spaces, be it home or office, keeping sustainability in mind without compromising on luxury.

One of the best ways to do it is landscape architecture, the design of outdoor areas. Cool spaces Landscape architecture is often relegated to merely planting for frivolous embellishment, but in reality, it is like a living art form that integrates strategic planning and environmental science.

Terrace gardens, especially, can offer us immersive experiences of nature in the midst of our hectic city lives.

They can be designed as havens shielded from the outside world, with plants protecting us from pollution and views of construction sites.

Instead of concrete, choose materials like gravel and grass-pavers. Construction waste can be turned into sustainable hardscape material. Boulders that emerge from the excavation for a constructing a building can be repurposed as decorative landscape elements in gardens, courtyards, and on terraces. We all know that time spent in green spaces is directly proportional to stress reduction and promotes healing, and yet this information is barely applied in our built environment.