08. Le jardin du paradis intérieur

Dr. Mahdi KHANSEFID is an assistant professor at University of Tehran, Iran with degrees in landscape engineering and environmental design from University of Tehran, and PhD in landscape architecture from Melbourne School of Design, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, the University of Melbourne, Australia. He’s teaching duties include undergraduate and graduate-level core courses, studios, and practical projects, and supervising theses. He sees his career as a platform for exploring novel research topics and pedagogical agenda, methods and tools in landscape architecture. He has published papers in international journals and many international, regional, and national congresses, conferences, symposia, magazines, and bulletins. He has been an active member of the Iranian Society of Landscape Professionals (ISLAP), and member of the editorial board of Green Message, the magazine published by ISLAP. Based on his experience in Melbourne Academy for Sustainable Society at Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), he served as a member of the steering council and secretary of the cultural and educational committee on green management of University of Tehran. He has been commissioned to work on landscape planning and design projects within multi-disciplinary teams in various contexts. He sees participating in design competitions as a means for staying up-to-date with new themes and tools in landscape architectural design methods, concepts, representation techniques and skills. One of his aims in teaching landscape architecture students is to facilitate and encourage student collaboration with other disciplines and foster networking among them within University of Tehran different faculties, nationally and internationally. Currently, Dr. Mahdi Khansefid is Chair of the Student Competition Working Group of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) and is representative of the Middle East region and Iran in the working groups of IFLA.

Setayesh ZANDI BABAI, born in 2001 in Tehran, Iran, holds a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture from the University of Tehran and is currently in her final year as a master's student in the same field. Her passion for landscape architecture stems from a deep love for plants and nature, which began at a young age. She has an exceptional talent for arranging plants and designing green spaces that harmonize with climatic and environmental conditions. Her meticulous attention to detail and continuous improvement drives her to seek innovative and effective solutions to enhance the functionality and aesthetics of green spaces. She possesses significant skills in color theory and the psychology of colors, applying them in her designs. She is particularly fond of different garden styles, especially Persian gardens, and enjoys blending them with other modern and traditional styles. During her undergraduate studies, she achieved first place and was directly admitted to the master's student in landscape architecture at the University of Tehran as a distinguished student. She participated in the Iranian Landscape Association's summer school, securing first place among all participants, and attended the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) conference. Throughout her education, she has taken specialized landscape architecture courses and participated in various workshops on related software and sketching. Additionally, she has authored several national and international conference papers on water scarcity, a primary concern of hers, and is actively seeking sustainable and resilient solutions in this area. In her green space designs, she emphasizes on environmental sustainability and is passionate about creating spaces where plants are intelligently selected to be compatible with climatic and environmental conditions. Her ambitious future goals include finding sustainable solutions to environmental challenges and global crises like water scarcity.

Zahra AMINIFARD was born in Malayer city in 1999. She is a master's student in landscape architecture at University of Tehran. She grew up in the vineyards of Malayer since birth and always loved the grape vine in their yard, and perhaps her interest in plants began there. As a teenager, she had a strong interest in acting, but by chance she started studying landscape engineering at Malayer University. She was an excellent student at this university for 4 years. Gradually, her interest in landscape architecture grew stronger than before, and after finishing her undergraduate degree, her interest reached such a level that she started a master's degree in this field at the University of Tehran and moved to Tehran. She is always looking for new topics and discovering new aspects of life. She loves old trees, environmental psychology, museums, history and all nostalgic issues, and perhaps this interest was not without influence in the design of the garden of Inside Heaven. Her interest in environmental psychology led her to choose multisensory landscape as the topic of her thesis which encompasses all aspects of her personality too. Combining this field with psychology has always been attractive to her. In addition to designing gardens and landscapes, she is also interested in maintaining green spaces and is currently working in this field. One of her goals in her designs is to create gardens that, in addition to their visual beauty and ecological improvement, tell a story to the audience. Her intellectual concern is to improve harsh urban environments by integrating them with nature and creating a desirable inner sense in humans, albeit brief but useful.

Mehrdad Shahi is a member of the Garden of Inside Heaven design team. His life began on the morning of May 9, 1993, in a small town in the central province of Iran called Mahallat city. A town surrounded by flower gardens and fruit orchards and a belt of natural scenery of soaring mountains, it is famous as the capital of flower and ornamentals production in Iran, even in the Middle East. Being immersed by natural resources was the beginning of his connection with nature since childhood. His young curiosity encouraged him to plant ornamental and edible plants in the small garden of their villa, and the thought of "how to create a beautiful nature as he saw it" always energized him in the small garden. In his adolescence, choosing the field of landscape architecture to study at university was the beginning of a huge change in his life. In a way, this choice revived the interests hidden in his being and revealed his internal abilities to improve the living environment. The positive effects of this transformation enabled him to win several times in national garden design skills competitions in Iran and persuaded the city authorities to invite him to improve and beautify urban landscapes and green spaces. Now, he is studying at the master's degree level at the University of Tehran. He has deep thoughts on the relationships and effects of urban parks and green landscapes on the health of the city environment and citizens, and is researching the design of health-promoting landscapes to increase physical activity and encourage residents to adopt an active lifestyle, spiritual restoration, social interactions, and health-promoting planting design. His interest in aromatic plants and planting techniques, the variety of colors, the naturalistic styles and materials close to nature, led to the acceptance of these ideas in the Inside Heaven Garden design group, attempting to show a corner of the mysterious effects of gardens on human health, calm spirits, and vitality.