‘Shma’ means ‘the Earth.’
We are a creative landscape architecture platform with multidisciplinary professions collaborating to deliver a meaningful and thoughtful design that deals with increasing environmental challenges and to create better earth.
We are a community of landscape architects, technicians, horticulturists, strategic designers, media makers, researchers, and more. Among the diverse team members, we actively exchange ideas and work collaboratively to generate transformative strategies and to deliver tangible and measurable landscape designs that enhance social and environmental sustainability. Toward the same goal, we work professionally with positive energy as a big family.
Shma has experiences in numerous domestic and international projects varied in types and scales, including residential, hospitality, institution, commercial, urban space, public parks, biodiversity, master planning, research and experimental.
Philosophy
We believe that our territory is an ecosystem, a living mechanism of nature and human with its own life, rhythm and system. The ecosystem is uncertain and fragile that we need innovative tools to deal with it. However, we first need to understand sensitivity and connectivity of the context between manmade and nature, city and rural, local and global, as well as wisdom and technology.
Expand Our Boundary
To make a change to our living territory, we cannot limit our roles or works to the conventional definition. Landscape architecture should be redefined to create the integral territory of all scales from regional to a garden. There is also no different spatial typology between architecture and landscape, as well as indoor and outdoor space.
Sustainability as a Framework
We fully acknowledge that built environment can create either positive or negative impact to our territory. We need to be sensitive and careful in the way we intervene sites and their context to cause minimum disruption to the existing ecosystem, and be a part of the mitigation tool to heal or improve the environment in a long term.
Place not Space
We believe in creating a place where people enjoy, feel related and belong to. This requires more than a well-designed space. We need to fully understand the ecosystem of each context, and put in the right mixture of programs and design elements to transform a space into a place full of life and joy.
Let It Grow
Our goal is not to create a landscape space, but to improve the society and the environment. Our landscape design is a starting point. Being used by a community, it will grow and evolve through time, and eventually create the sustainable and inclusive future for everyone.