THE IMAGE OF THE CITY

As a student of Landscape i thought it would be very useful and important to know more about the main principles when designing cities, especially in an urban scale. Therefore i decided to read a book which is called " The Image of the City" by Kevin Lynch.
The main focus of discussion in this book is about importance of  clarity or "legibility" of the cityscape.
In the course of examining the visual form of the city the book looks at three American cities: Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles.
Varies methods of analysis were carried out including: a systematic field reconnaissance, mapping the presence of varies elements, their visibility, their image strength or weakness,their connections and disconnections.

One of the other method of  research was a lengthy interview held with a small sample of city residents in which there were requests for descriptions, locations, sketches and for the performance of imaginary trips.
Analysed descriptions about  current cityscape conditon of those three american cities gave me an immense amount of clues how to be able to look at my own proposals from a critical point of view and justify my ideas 

more fairly.


The following images illustrating the summary of analysis of three american cities and they can serve as a typical example of how to approach changes in city design, based on current problematic issues.

outline map of the Boston Peninsula

The visual form of Boston as seen in the field

Problems of the Boston image

The visual form of Jersey City as seen in the field

The visual form of Los Angeles as seen in the field.

From the drawings above I understood  that the basic step of redesigning or bringing some positive changes to the city should be based on the existing advantages and disadvantages of the city which can be seen from site analysis. As it was written in the book, the contents of the city images are classified into five types of elements. These are : Paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. I have also learned in more detail about those elements and the significance of their impact to form a beautiful, legible and communicable model of environment.
From the total content of the book and its drawings I conclude that the first absolutely essential and fair step towards the right, compelling and unambiguous solution for any kind of proposal  ( especially in an urban scale ) would be site analysis or in other words " an objective judgement based on the immediate appearance of elements in the field".

PRESENTATION SKILLS

On my 2nd focus week i was learning how to use a digital programme called "3Ds Max design" in one to one tutorials provided by Real Animation Works ltd.
I realised that 3d modelling is a vital skill to have as a designer and it would also significantly improve my presentation skills and increase my ability to deliver my ideas more accurately and in a comprehensible way.
I have started from very basics and progressed to an intermediate level. Since 3Ds Max is a huge programme and offers a wide variety of commands and functions including 3d animations, i concentrated on how to create basic 3 dimensional forms and how to apply materials, textures and also how to adjust lighting.
By the end of the course i felt quite confident about my digital skills and was well prepared to present my proposal in more detailed way.

I started from creating simple forms such as sofa and table. 

The following images are related to the "Seat for Kingston"

The project was created in autocad, however materials, 

textures, lights and rendering were done in 3Ds Max.

What is Landscape

From the very beginning of the first semester i was interested to know more about the meaning of Landscape and what actually forms the Landscape.  Therefore on my first focus week i decided to get familiar with  the landscape forms and how they form spaces. Moreover i also wanted to look at their relationships with the surrounding environment through numerous analysis which i found in a book called "Opening Spaces", by Hans Loidl and Stefan Bernard.
 The book starts with clear explanation of what is form and the role of its components in terms of their relationships to the form as well as representing perception of forms through analytical and comprehensible set of drawings. Furthermore it gave me although simple but clear answers on what is form, forming, designing and what are the differences between architectural and landscape spaces.  In the process of reading the book i also clarified for myself what is landscape architect do as a designer as well as  the differences between designing, creativity, design and finally designing landscape architecture.

This image shows variety of examples with distinct and indistinct spaces and how important is the combination of area units and solid boundaries when creating an effective space.





 
This image shows the way how to avoid the feeling of being cramped in the space where ratio 1:1 is positively encouraged by making the boundaries less dominant with the use of colour and brightness.

These images represent the angles of human's horizontal and vertical fields of vision according to the distance between person and an object.

This images are representing functionalities of paths
when sunk by 5-15 and up to 100 cm in different
topographical conditions and indicating that not
only relief but also individual features along the
path edges can give a strong sense of direction.





This image shows hot to structure paths and its significance in creating scenic views.

The image shows that people's instinctive movement in relation to trees (especially when they are used as path markers ) does not relate
to the crown of the tree but the control effect comes from the location of the trunk.




The following images give a clue about how to balance or in the contrary, create even more inequalities of levels in sloped spaces
by planting trees in relevant places.