Landscape experience : an archetypal landscape approach to water spaces

Abstract

Aesthetics were the main passion of early century landscape architects. A focus on the concern with ecology followed, while the late twentieth century landscape architecture developed towards a concentration on restoration and recovery and so focussed more on redeployment than replacement (Campbell 2006). Today, in the twenty-first century, mankind is overwhelmed with issues of global warming, exhausted natural resources, and disappearing ecologies. Landscape architects are focused on providing sustainable landscapes from which both humans and nature can benefit. Attempts to create parks or green spaces for people‟s enjoyment become joined movements to simultaneously restore ecosystems, produce food or energy, reclaiming damaged sites and designing these interventions to be entertaining and interesting to the surrounding communities. Furthermore, landscapes have become catalysts in assisting with urban densification and reducing urban sprawl in their attempts to be multi-functional, process- and environment- focused designs. At last a question remains: do these twenty-first century landscapes relate to the individual? Have these sustainable systems and processes become the new aesthetic? And do visitors to designed landscapes still have rich spatial experiences? This dissertation explores the questions stated above. Part One focuses on the countering of urban sprawl through a process-focused landscape design response on an urban and framework level, while Part Two investigates if this new contemporary notion aids designers to create spatially aesthetic landscapes. A theoretical study and experiential conceptual development strategies are followed to aid in form-generation. The design follows a hypothetical course that starts with process and system planning followed by spatial landscape explorations. This phenomenological investigation will be resolved up to a detailed sketch plan level.