Founded in 2017, Thinking Hats Landscape Architecture Studio is a Calicut-based practice working across residential, institutional, workplace, roofscape, and public projects in India and beyond. What began as a small studio rooted in architecture has evolved into a research-driven landscape practice grounded in ecology and place. In its early years, the studio focused largely on residential gardens and private sanctuaries, projects that shaped its understanding of scale, restraint, and the emotional experience of inhabitation. Over time, the practice began to question landscape as mere backdrop or embellishment, recognizing it instead as the ground of relationships between people and soil, climate and culture, memory and material.

This shift reshaped the studio’s direction. Projects such as Vendome, a rooftop park in Kakkattil, explored how constrained footprints can become shared commons through contextual sensitivity. A barrier-free landscape at the Institute of Palliative Medicine reinforced the belief that accessibility is not compliance, but care. Terrain-responsive works like Wind Charmers Court reaffirm a core principle, to read the land before drawing upon it. Today, the practice balances ecology and structure, research and craft, beginning every project with careful listening to site, users, and ecological systems, while resisting unnecessary imposition of form.

Beyond built work, the studio extends into stewardship and experimentation. An ongoing bamboo initiative in Mavoor transforms a depleted laterite quarry into a regenerative landscape through soil restoration, water harvesting, and afforestation. In a time of increasing climate vulnerability and urgent need for public green infrastructure in India, the practice positions landscape architecture not as ornament, but as necessity. At its core, Thinking Hats approaches design as an act of listening, creating landscapes that foster resilience, dignity, and enduring relationships between people and place.