ARCH291 LANDSCAPE DESIGN STUDIO

MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

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Observing Landscape

Observation is a foundational way of perceiving and conceptualizing landscape(s). Moreover, it is through the ways we observe, interpret and express that landscapes get defined.

Landscape Design course, via this ongoing work of critical observation invites students, as individuals, to convey and cultivate their own gaze into their surroundings – their own perceptions of landscape. Here, the intention is to encourage students to bridge theoretical issues covered throughout lectures/readings and actual space. Equally, it is to challenge their previous ways of seeing/observing landscape and help them to develop an eye on identifying assets of landscape.

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Formation of Landscape Space through the Landform

   Design of topography means the creation of the space from up to down or down to up through shaping the slopes. They are one of the most crucial elements in landscape design. The gradients create the view, which is the most memorable feeling in a landscape. The slope can change easily, but every change can increase or decrease the visual impression on people. In other words, every adjustment on the slope directly affects how people observe the space itself.

  For instance, a small slope change in a flat site can be turned into a dominant space. The designer can modify the slope by adding a human-made set of steps that led people. The place that was once wholly natural becomes now both a natural and artificial complex transition space.

   As a result, what we should not ignore is that every design on the landscape starts with the given landform. How we shape, it is up to us.

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NATURE IN FRAME

The mission of the landscape architect is to design and improve the human environment. Designing with,and accordingly to existing natural framework is not easy. Here there is a river and a green surrounding. The designer did not articulated the topography or the water, but instead with the help of some structures he/she managed to connect the people with this river. The material used on these structures is wood, which again creates a unity with the natural surface. While walking on this park and passing through these bridges, anyone can feel the already existing framework dominating the human-made. Also the view is framed by the wooden columns creating different vistas from different perspectives. The urban structures on the background is hidden by the trees so it creates a feeling of total green infinity and the escape from the city life, while the reflections on the water help this sense of green infinity.

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Corridor of Memories. 

Spaces do not exist to accommodate people but to accommodate their memories and experiences and as time goes by, our perception of spaces also changes. Therefore, spaces are constantly evolving in our minds and that is truly fascinating. Thereupon, the history of a place will be like a passage of our experiences in times, same as the passage in the picture which might just seem like the entrance of the faculty of architecture constructed of posts and a slab but in my opinion it is definitely more than that. Walking down this entrance passage and looking around is like walking down a memory lane and watching its metamorphosis through time. The meaning of this place has definitely changed since the first time I have walked down this path. At first, it seemed like a welcoming path to an unknown and yet thrilling journey to start as a freshman but over the time, it has changed and shaped differently with each bitter and sweet memory of mine. Without human’s experiences and memories, a place is nothing but a dead entity.

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Areas has the borders, or we set the borders

              The place in the picture is the park of a promenade area in Kahramanmaraş. There is a playground in the middle of the area and canopies lined up on the hills. There is a empty space very huge and it seems unusable. However, while kids come and play in this playground, they also play around the park and they run on grass climb the hills. İn addition, people who don’t want to be close to playground sit the grass, have long pretty chats, eat something and takes sweet naps on this large area. Borders of the park are changing with the people activity, interaction and with their ideas. So, Borders of some areas can be changed by people who are using that place .

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First sight above a site

 A site analysis is the first step of a designer to construct the first lines of the project in his/her mind. It includes observing, understanding the characteristics and reshaping the landscape with sketches and maps through its potentials. The analyses should also include the time, the weather, the location of the landscape and a landscape should be evaluated with both hard and soft data, objectively and subjectively, to be able to see the whole potentials of the site. On the photograph, there is the first site that I am analyzing in my academic life. I will try to feel and see the every feature that I can reach to find a design idea that can appreciate the site. From the angle of the sun to the reeds located on the left side of the area, everything should be my concern as an architect to-be. For the final product, everything must be considered for both nature’s and human’s sake.

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Observer’s path

This is a photo of a seashore boulevard in Baku, Azerbaijan. This promenade stretches parallel to both the seafront, on the right, and park full of different gardens, on the left. The city’s “historic yet ultra-modern” characteristic is also featured in this boulevard. From its starting location till its finish point this parkway comprises in itself a combination of both ancient, some of which have a history of more than 110 years, and contemporary architecture, construction of which still continues. So, while strolling along this boulevard you can experience ever-changing views of the city, alongside with the views of the well-manicured gardens, on one side, and an active life of other people, who are walking, running, riding a bike or just sitting on the benches, on the other side. This is the main feature that I like about this boulevard, an ability to offer a balance between nature, social life and architecture. Although, this boulevard is active and full of people even in the evenings, the atmosphere and vibe of this place always changes according to the time you are visiting.

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Harmonization of nature and architecture

  This photograph shows the city built on large rocks. The way to climb to the city is so beautifully integrated with nature! Everything is a part of nature that no material used looks artificial. The tiny rocks lined up carefully to make it easier for people to walk while observing. Simultaneously, climbing is aesthetically pleasing and harmonized with nature and never gives the feeling that we are moving on an artificial road while climbing. When we climb to the top of the rocks, the view we encounter is breathtaking and beyond imaginary. It is impossible not to lose ourselves while watching this city and nature under our feet. While making our observation of the site, it affects the feeling that the city belongs to you, that houses, trees, and rocks are yours, and this feeling makes you hold your breath. The integration and harmonization of such elegant nature and architecture strongly emphasize the importance of architecture and field analysis once again.

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Fragmented blank paper

While designing space in the landscape, we have unlimited elements. We have green, terrain, furnish, even wind and sky in the three-dimensional landscape design world. One of the main aspects of this world is Horizontal surfaces. As we can see from the photo, there is a lot of capability when performing operations on the surface, and fragmentation is one of them.As I walked through this space, I thought about how the designer started, s/he had the surface like a blank paper that anything could be done about. One empty space is divided into different places in every drawn line. Besides, not only the horizontal relation between these spaces but also the perception of vertical elements have changed. Fragmentation gives reference to every element. As can be seen in the photo, before the fragmentation, trees are somewhere in the area, but now, they have references and connections. Sometimes they are in the middle of the place, sometimes in the cross points of the lines. They cannot be out of the space because we have places on every side of the lines. Another thing I noticed while walking here is how it increases the experience of the space. My eyes seemed to follow a story instead of just walking by.It is a story whose moves away from each other ,then approaches and converges in some places but always unified and harmonious.

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Impuissance of the embracement of the land

Streets, boundaries, pavements, paths, roads, levels, symbols, and pure landscaping…

Which of all surrounded by vertical masses that tell you different stories, and which of all is enriched by the visibility and the existence of human beings, their traffic, sound, and color…

Which of all shaded and protected by the warm arms of the shadows of these enormous volumes, and which of all is -with its full being- devoted, anyhow, to the services and aesthetics of the world land.

  Even a creation of the 16th century, it is mind-blowing to see how the place had entirely evolved with preserving the human traffic on it. You see how the landscape belongs to people and how people -in a way- melt their soul and existence in the limitless flow of the scaping of the land they are holding, standing, and beholding.

  Regardless of the angle -even, and maybe the most, from the top- you realize how the landform itself was shaped according to the community's needs, flow, and request.

You see how the landscape is still in a struggle for being for people* and how people are, yet, helplessly impuissant to embrace it.

*my primary attribution to the lecture

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FOLLOW THE FLOW, TO RELAX.

  Aksaray Kılınçaslan Parkı.

 It is a secluded place outside the city, surrounded by nature.

The architect, who preferred to respect nature, used natural water source as a reference line in his design and put it at the top of the hierarchy steps with its artificiality.

Then he placed camellias, walkways, plants that create shadows for people to sit, and some bridges to cross the water around it.

Combining its simplicity and naturalness with its huge space, Kılınçarslan Parkı has become a place where people can escape from stress and the complexity of life to relax.

My criticism about this place is; People come here for a picnic and I don't think the number of trees creates enough shade for them. I think it was related to the budget constraint, I even attribute its simplicity to that situation because it almost never interferes with nature.

But whenever I am about to be beaten by the stress of life, I come here to relax.

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Square to Rectangle

  In this landscape, we can observe sitting area covered with square panels design and it is create a space to people to sitting. This landscape contains green, wet, furnish, wind, and sky which they are elements of the landscape (Dee, To design landscape art, 2012). There is green spaces in the landscape. Green spaces comprise of plants which are suitable the weather and climate. Fountains and sea are wet elements in this landscape. Sitting areas, playgrounds, lambs etc. are furnish. This park open everyone and every hour. It is create human flow all days a week 24/7 hours. Therefore, the security of the park provided by itself.            

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  Playing with the Experience

The Belvedere Palace's entrance garden is designed with the idea of approaching the landscape as a place of movement. Within the garden, paths are defined with the help of trees and sculptures leading the user to the target, serving to a directly goal-oriented approach, which, according to Loidl& Bernard (2003,114), it is the most natural way of organizing paths, and the one closest to the way people move forward naturally. While the chosen goal is directly visible through all paths, the way it is experienced changes while the users keep walking on the path. The proportion of the experience is designed to start with a proportion of  6:1 and it gets nearly to 1:1 by the end of the path. So, at the start of the path, the palace is not defining an enclosure, but the feeling is mostly sky dominating both the palace and the garden; in the middle of the path, the structure gets bigger and starts to compete with the sky, and defining the garden as space. What the user feels while walking can be expressed as a conflict of dominance between the sky and the structure. A fight that the winner changes according to the user's position on the path. Also, the contrast that has been created between the flat surface and the monumental building emphasizes both the feelings of voidness felt within the garden and the feeling of strong boundaries and edges.

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  Bordering The Infinity

  Late Baroque garden design by Dominique Girard, representing the height of formal French garden style, based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. The feeling of the horizon, the endlessness, the sky dominating the city on the background is striking on the flat plane. Althought there are no solid boundaries between the garden and the city, and the dominant feeling is borderlessness, the strongly ordered patterns of the garden borders the view by capturing the eye to itself. While looking through the windows of the palace, on the vista, we see the level ground work as a background that highlights the image of the urban city on the background, and the human figures walking on that background, creating a foreground that we look at.” A unified area-unit cannot create space on its own, it only defines a field” says Loidl & Bernard (2003, 49). Here, it seems like a field rather than a space at first sight, but the level ground contains number of spaces within itself, spaces that are not defined by solid borders, but with borders that are defined by the use of paths as articulating design elements, and people that are using these paths are helping to highlight and define these spaces, allowing us to say that the access creates spaces.

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When will we reach?

while I am observing this space of landscape I realize how the path walk allows people to continue moving and direct them as they want to reach their destination because they cannot see it directly until they reach the end so people can go and see almost everything until they arrive at their points. Also, these trees can work as distraction points so they can stop and stand or sit under them so they can use them as they wish and at the same time they can define the path and lead people how to go. Moreover, I think the lake also acts as an intermediate point to lead people to another direction and space to reach their destination and they can stop near it and observe it so I think these elements are essential in this road. In my opinion, this type of path (Shifted goal-oriented path) is important in the landscape as it does not restrict the person to one view or one thing that can see while they are walking or moving. However, they can have a wider image of their surrounding.

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Movement of the Restaurant Area 

According to our lecture, any good access program is based on three objectives: analyzing goals, providing visual links, and defining the path line. The picture meets all of those three objectives. First of them is that the restaurant, which is seen in the background, encourages the movement of people. Secondly, Visual links such as connected pathways and benches on the wall encourage people for forwarding movement. Lastly, the path, which is strictly defined by face stones, walls, plantation, and even the slope, defines the pathway. However, the path and goal destination is not direct. In other words, the goal is not visible from the start. Path and goal destination is shifted. Moreover, to decrease the temptation of directly walk, there are other goals—for example, the sitting area (not visible from the photo) and the sports area. They create positive control with the help of plantations. The sports area, which is in the higher ground, is elevated above the surrounding and defined by an area-unit and plantation as boundaries. On the contrary, the sitting area is in the lover ground and defined by continuous walls and area-unit.