Changing visions of the city park designs and analysis of design approaches and principles

Abstract

Public spaces have crucial significance on the collective memory and urban identity in the cities. They form the identity of the city and reflect the collective memory of society. Urban parks are one of the important public spaces and they are cultural heritage of the cities. Park designs bridge from past to future, so they introduce evolutionary process of past and create visions for the future. The representative exemplars of the city park designs form the iconic image of the cities. These democratic public spaces gather urban inhabitants and visitors and contribute to the collective memory. In addition, city parks are the main components of the urban green infrastructure system. They provide natural habitats for urban fauna and space for recreational activities, reduce urban heat island effect and clean the air, can help to manage storm water. Furthermore, urban parks enhance public health and maintain sustainable environments for cities. City parks locates in the intersection area of the sustainability that has environmental, social and economic dimensions. From past to present, the visions of the city park designs have been evolved through changing philosophical worldviews, needs of eras, art movements and scientific and technological innovations. Practices of urban park designs from past to present enable to analyze visions of different time periods clarifying relations with art and science and understand transformation of paradigms during the process. The focus of landscape architecture has evolved from 19th century to present, so it can be claimed that these changes have also influenced the design philosophies and approaches of the city park designs. City parks are the identity elements of the cities in terms of the expression and representation of periodic differences. The representative exemplars form a basis for understanding past conditions and approaches, and developing new visions and strategies for the future. The purpose of the research is to review changing visions of the city park designs based on the design approaches and principles that have evolved from past to present and analyze their design characteristics, strategies and main symbolic elements. In order to achieve this aim, the research is handled in the intersection of art history and scientific & technological innovations during the study to enlighten their influences on the city park designs. The city parks, which are considered as iconic representations of each era, are the significant exemplars for today's park designs. The general question of the research: How the representative exemplars of the city park designs will introduce an approach to form the future urban park designs? The hypothesis of the thesis is "The city park designs will be crucial exemplars for understanding applied practices and developing new visions. Complex park designs will emerge by adding new innovations into the design approaches and strategies of these iconic exemplars throughout new inventions and changing needs of the era. New strategies with technological development will shape the future park designs. As well as each park design represents the characteristics of their eras, they also refer to other periods. In the light of these facts, it can be said that this point is related to evolutionary process. The representative exemplars of the city park designs that have evolved from past to present will play a role in shaping the future visions of the urban park designs". Industrial Revolution is the starting point of the research based on the timeline of the evolutionary process in history. The basic scientific and technological developments were addressed considering Industrial Revolution, modern biology, ecology, invention of computer and internet that have important influences on the city park designs. Meanwhile, art-historical classification was started to use for explanation of changing city park visions from romantic period to present. Art history was classified as romantic, modern, postmodern and post-postmodern eras and this classification formed the main structure of the study. Changes and developments in the historical process considering characteristics of the eras, art, architecture, city planning and landscape architecture disciplines were elucidated in theoretical framework. Literature was reviewed about these developments in the evolutionary process from books, articles, magazines, journals and web sources. Then, twenty-four city park designs, which were designed and implemented after Industrial Revolution, were selected in the first phase considering strong representative exemplars of historical, iconic, and large scale urban parks of the cities based on the values ranging from 2.7 to 1000 hectares. After that, twelve of these urban public parks were selected to investigate in the second phase considering each of three are belongs to Romantic, Modern, Postmodern and Post-postmodern periods. Finally, eight urban public parks, which are strong representative exemplars of historical, iconic and large scale parks considering the periods, were selected for comparative analysis. Each two of them represent respectively romantic, modern, postmodern and post-postmodern periods. Because the city park designs are a case study to understand previous projects and develop new visions, the suggested format for case studies is used for describing evolution of the city park designs and the method is organized by project type 'urban parks' in order to compare and review. In order to determine the iconic images of the representative exemplars of the city park designs through particular characteristics, five symbolic elements were adapted to study including edges, districts, landmarks, nodes and paths. Project facts, characteristics of eras, design philosophies, approaches, concepts, main symbolic elements and architectural and landscape elements of these exemplars clarify periodic differences and some similarities and form the matrix. Outcomes of the research were formed by visualization of data in each chapter. They comprised timeline that demonstrates city park designs in the evolutionary process of art and science involving thresholds, which are scientific discoveries and technological innovations, art movements, world wars, economic crisis, environmental problems, conferences, books that change theoretical framework and the matrix that introduces the profile information of the park designs, characteristics of each era, design philosophies, approaches and concepts of park designs, main symbolic elements, architectural and landscape elements. The representative exemplars of city park designs, which are the iconic representations of each era, are an important base for today's park designs. As a result of the thesis study, it has been proven that these representative exemplars will play a critical role in shaping the future city park designs. Analyzing the applied projects is important in order to understand the urban park designs that have evolved in the intersection of art and science throughout the historical process, form a basis for developing new visions with changing needs of the era and progressive science and technology. The research has demonstrated that each park design represents its own periodic characteristics and approaches, as well as forms the basis of the next design projects. It is anticipated that complex park designs will emerge by adding innovations to the design approaches and strategies of these representative exemplars. Especially technological developments will contribute to the theoretical framework of these urban park designs and will expand the solutions for the environmental problems. The representative exemplars of urban park designs that evolve from the past to the present will play a role in shaping the future visions of the city park designs.