Recent Trends in Modern Urban Concept of Landscape Design PDF

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 17

1

1.0
Introduction
The features, which have been regarded as essential items of urban
equipment have changed though time, and have made various impressions on
the present landscape. The resultant urban landscape is a product of the
thoughts and ideas of the time. The significance of Chandigarh lies in the fact that
it is a culmination of the various concepts of urban planning propagated in the
Europe and America in the early years of twentieth century and perhaps the
resultant urban landscape has some lessons to offer.

1.1
Significance
The city has an identifiable landscape structure pertaining to the open
spaces and the circulation system, which perhaps is demonstrated by a few cities
in India. It has got a gridiron pattern of roads intersected with a grid of green
spaces with the larger central natural eroded channel called the „leisure valley‟.
This green grid comprises of a series of northeast -southwest park belts, the most
prominent being the leisure valley. Today it is a place of gardens, stadiums, park s,
nurseries and groves. Parallel to this „city park‟ are narrower neighborhood belts
running through the residential sectors and providing people with largely
vehicular -free „greenway‟ for a variety of community facilities.
Urban landscape planners see u rban green space as a living component
linked and continuous throughout the urban structure. This concept embraces the
necessary functions of urban space as providing for diverse recreational needs, as
helping to shape the form and structure of our cities and providing an outdoor
educational „laboratory‟ for its citizens. Actively used „green spaces‟ and „green
corridors‟ based on such natural features as stream and river valleys, ridges and
woodland belts, will also reduce the density and monotony of large scale,
continuously built up areas. They will provide a new quality of spaciousness in
cities. An urban space system, which fully recognizes conservation principles,
ensures that urban space is not simply „space left over after planning‟. It enables all
spaces in cities to be evaluated in accordance with their existing natural qualities and
their environmental impact.
2
2.0 PRECEDENTS FOR MODERN TOWN PLANNING
From some perspectives, especially it‟s results, town planning looks as though
it is an attempt to make cities function as efficiently as factories. The more
conventional view is that it began as a reaction against the industrialization, which
had created such great inequalities in living conditions. This reaction initially took
four rather different forms; municipal by -laws to govern building standards,
picturesque town layouts, Haussmann‟s reorganization of Paris, and model
industrial towns. These are the precursors of modern planning.
Regulations to govern building practices, especially with regard to fir e and safety
measures, had been in effect for several centuries, and in the second half of the
nineteenth century these were greatly extended in order to restrict the
unscrupulous practices of builders. Though these regulations were intended to
improve the design and layout of housing they had the unfortunate consequence of
encouraging the construction of monotonous rows of identical houses at 50 to the
acre, with no parks or provisions for shops and schools.

Workers Housing, London. (Source: Benevolo Leon ardo, History of modern


architecture, vol 1,MIT, 1996)
3
The ugliness of industrial cities had
in part prompted the gothic revival
in architecture, and this duly found
it‟s equivalent in planning with the
publication in Germany in 1889 of
Camillo Sitte‟s boo k on town building as a work of art, in which he argued fo
concretions, pick ing up the patterns of existing streets and housing layout
„an outgrowth of the circumstances of the

site‟.
Diagram of Haussm ann’s ‘percements’

2.2.1
CITY BEAUTIFUL AND MASTER
PLANNING

The city beautiful movement had four components that applied at all urban scales.

1. Civic Art: the beautification of cities through addition of public or semipublic


works of art, including buildings. Civic art emphasized urban unification
through the use of impressive, generally renaissance inspired, architectural
styles. It also included the addition of elaborate artistic pieces such as
murals, fountains, frescoes, mosaics, and decorative light fixtures to the
streetscape or to public buildings.
2. Civic design: the city was regarded as a unit, which could be organized for
societal goals. Civic design emphasized monumental outdoor spaces both
as appropriate e xpressions of this sense of community and as the best way
to organize civic and commercial functions. Outdoor space itself could be
a planning material and that such spaces could be as architectural as any
structure.
3. Civic reform: it combined both social a nd political reform. Reforms such as
settlement house programme for slums.
4. Civic improvement: this emphasized the “ clean up, paint -up, fix -up”4
approach to urban beauty. Although often neglected as an aspect of the
movement, it was in many ways it‟s most si gnificant contribution because
improvements such as construction of sidewalks, street paving, and
dedication of public squares led to the upgrading of towns everywhere.
Each of these four components, civicart, civic design, civic reform, and civic
improvem ent, dealt to a greater or lesser degree with ten general objectives of city
beautiful planning:
1. To centralize services and related uses in such a way that a hierarchical
land use structure was achieved.
2. To establish convenient and efficient commercial and civic core districts.
3. To establish hygienic urban conditions, especially for residential areas.
4. To express the individuality of towns through exploitation of scenic features.
5. To treat composition of building groups as a more important functional and
a esth etic concern than architectural design.
6. To create focal points in the streetscape to visually unify the city.
7. To integrate regional circulation systems into a clear hierarchy.
8. To treat open spaces as critical urban needs, but emphasizing active rather
than passive recreation.
9. To preserve some historic urban elements.
10. To provide a unified system for incorporation of modern urban features, such
as industrial facilities and skyscrapers, into the existing city.

Aerial Perspective of the Chicago transportation Centre,to be located west of the


Chicago river,proposed by Daniel Burnham.The building with the tow er is the post
office flanked by railroad depots.

2.2.2
GARDEN CITIES
Turning the palliatives of philanthropic industrialists into a more general and
broad scale prescription, the English reformer Ebenezer Howard promoted a vision
of population dispersal into a series of planned communities in his influential book
Garden Cities Of Tomorrow (1902). Considered the father of the garden city
movement, Howard saw how with the proliferating network of railroads, it was
possible to leap over the city‟s no longer fixed boundaries and systematically 5
create within the larger regional framework communities that combined the
natural advantage of the country with the amenities of urban life.
Ebenezer Howard imagined a city, which aimed at
- Improvised living conditions for the workers.
- Cities without slums, blighted areas.
- City with efficient drainage system
- City limited in density of habitation
- City limited in areas organized to carry on all the essential functions of an
urban community, business, industries, administr ation, equipped with
sufficient parks and open spaces.
- City, which can be limited in size.
- City surrounded with permanent green belt.
As a result of this thought process he came up with an idea called garden
cities .
He explained the components of garden c ities in terms of three magnets.
The tree magnets were town, country, and the combination of town and the country.
The town and country had it‟s own advantages and disadvantages.
Town:
The main features were,
- High wages
- Good opportunities for employment.
- Tempting prospects of advancement.
- Good places for amusement.
- High prices and rents.
- Excessive hours of toil
- Long distances to the work place.
- Poor drainage system
- Fearful slums
- Poor health conditions of the inhabitants

Country:
The main features were,
- Sources of beauty and wealth
- Beautiful vistas, parks, fresh air.
- Low rents
- Less opportunity for employment

The town -c ountry magnet:


The objective is to integrate both town and country so that the users could
enjoy the advantages of both the magnets.
6

The three Magnets. The Garden City network.


4.0
CONCEPTS OF LANDSCAPE IN THE MODERN URBAN PLANNING.

OBJECTIVITY IN ART SCIENCE AND PLANNING .


The distinctive feature of twentieth -century landscape perception and
planning is objectivity. Radical advances in science art and planning stemmed
from objective analysis, which produced a shift away from analogically derived
assumptions about nature to reliance on quantitive methods for acquiring scientific
information about natural p henomenon. By the early twentieth century science
had swept away romantic notions about the physical world and had replaced
them with objective verifiable models.
In the field of landscape planning, science and art created adherents to
powerful and opposin g design versions. Jellico singles out Antonio Gaudi and Le
Corbusier as examples of the two extremes. Gaudi, a modernist master at
improvising form intuitively, contrived environments inspired by the logic of nature
and materials, while Le Corbusier produ ced environments based on the logic of
form and function. Applied to early twentieth -century design and planning, which
evolved from social concerns, the dual force of intuition and logic gave rise to
numerous aesthetic directions, some of which continue t o shape planning and
design in the late twentieth century.
Plan, Park Guell.Antonio Gaudi. Plan, Chandigarh, Le corbusier. 7

Urban landscape planning


In contrast to Gaudi‟s bold concepts, the preponderance of twentieth -
century urban landscape design ev olved from concepts of objectivity and analysis
rooted in the modernist sensibility. Leaders on the continent were Adolph Loos, Le
Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van Der Rohe, all of whom were instrumental in
developing modernism in architecture and pl anning. Their concepts fostered a
change in the perception of landscape, from the value -laden nineteenth century
view to one embracing a strictly utilitarian application of function in design.
4.1
MODERN URBAN LANDSCAPE SPACE

THE MODERN CITY REVISITED


The opposition to the modern vision of the city was to a large extent justified,
although the populist alternatives had less to offer. The main problem was an
almost total lack of civic space -that is, space which supported public uses
appropriate for a hig h-density urban environment. Public social space was a
problematic area of modern urbanism. The concepts of rationality and efficiency
of CIAM urban planning principles –as we know, rather more supposed than actual
did not include civic space among the fou r essential classifications of dwelling,
work, leisure and circulation. Such concepts were happily in accord with the
pressure from corporations and governments to de -politicize and de populate the
city.
The solution offered was landscape. While the provis ion of grass and trees
was not unwelcome in the residential parts of the city - some schemes, in theory at
least, looked not unlike the Georgian squares in which so many British architects
lived –it was certainly inappropriate for areas of social interactio n in their centers.
The reaction among architects to this simple minded dialectic began soon after
the construction of the first masterpieces - the ministry of education, Rio de Janeiro
(1936-1942) by Lucio Costa and lever house, new York(1950 -2) by Skidmor e,Owings
and Merrill -simply because the many poor imitations showed that the resulting in
left over spaces could offer no strategy of benefit to the city.

Le corbusier shows how courtyards - ‘the traditional way of using a site’ – can be
replaced by a sla b,in the context of Lucio Costa’s Ministry of education in Rio de
Janiro .
8
LE CORBUSIER’S CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE
Le Corbusier‟s concept of urban landsc ape were not static but evolved
during his lifetime. Its first definitive form was the city of three million of 1922,the
Rad ia nt City 1932,and the three human Establishments of 1941-42.

5.1
THE CITY OF THREE MILLION ( The Contemporary City )

This was a st udy for an entire capital


city (Paris), in which a high density, high rise
residential and administrative core for an elite
was to be surrounded, beyond a green belt, by
an extensive band of low density suburbs.

The plan was rigorously symmetrical


with or thogonal and diagonal streets. The
buildings were of three types,
-Large cruciform skyscrapers in the center.
-Six storey houses in the intermediate zone,
and
-Immeuble villas on the outskirts.

The aim of the contemporary city were:


-To decongest city centers.
-To increase the population density of city
centers by building tall; upto 1200 people per
hectare compared with only 300 per hectare
in central Paris.
-To improve traffic circulation by replacing
narrow streets with wide thoroughfares; the
stree t, he declared, should be a traffic
machine.
-To increase open space; the tall apartments
would require only about five percent
coverage compared with 90 percent coverage
in central Paris.
-To provide a variety of vistas and
perspectives.

Plan and view of the Contemporary C


it y

5.2
RADIANT CITY
It was envisaged that the entire9
population would live in high -density
conditions, with low -density suburbs
banished altogether.
The plan had much in common with the
Contemporary City - clearance of the
histor ic cityscape and rebuilding utilizing
modern methods of production.
The building would be placed upon
pilotus, five meters off the ground, so that
more land could be given over to nature.
Setback from other unites would be
achieved by les red ents , pattern s that
Corbusier created to lessen the effect of
uniformity. The scale of the apartment
houses was fifty meters high, which would
accommodate, according to Corbusier,
2,700 inhabitants with fourteen square
meters of space per person.
Plan,Radiant c ity The business center, which had
engendered much elaboration in the
Contemporary City, was positioned to the
north of les unites and consisted of
Cartesian (glass & steel) skyscrapers every
400 meters. The skyscrapers were to provide
office space for 3,200 workers per building.
As in the Contemporary City, corridor
streets were destroyed. Automobile traffic
Detail Plan,Radiant City was to circulate on pilotus supported roadways
five meters above the earth. The entire
ground was given as a "gift" to pedestrians, with pathways running in orthogonal
and diagonal projections. Other transportation modes, like subways and trucks,
had their own roadways s eparate from automobiles.

View,Radiant City,the
buildings are on Pilotis to
maintain the continuity of
the landscape.
10
5.3
THREE HUMAN ESTABLISHMENTS (1941 - 42)

The whole of human activities can be summed up in: living, working,


circulating, ci rculating one body and mind. These functions, in their turn, can be
arranged according to three types of human establishments:
-The radio -centric city, a place of exchanges that groups the functions of
leadership, administration, commerce, handicraft and t hinking;
-The linear industrial city, a place of transformation established along the routes for
the passage of goods, and
-Finally the unit of agricultural exploitation.

The three establishments are served by a traffic system, which classifies motor
v ehicle traffic according to speed and separate the pedestrian. Different sectors
of different towns are completely reorganized in terms of function and traffic.
Finally, the linear industrial City was associated with the unite d’ Habitation, a
free standin g twenty storey slab block combining residential accommodation with
the essential source of domestic supply, in which the traditional unity of urban form
was completely abandoned
A constant feature remained throughout his commitment to achieving a green
ci ty, a landscape city offering its inhabitants „sun, space and greenery‟.
11
7.0 THE CHANDIGARH LANDSCAPE – A CASE STUDY OF MODERN LANDSCAPE

The transformation of the rural landscape of pre Chandigarh is being


viewed in two aspects, how the landscape resources influenced the landscape of
Chandigarh, Landscape resource as a determinant, and how the Chandigarh city
transformed the landscape resources, Transformation of the Landscape
Resources.

7.1
LANDSCAPE RESOURCES AS A DET ERMINANT

Siting
Chandigarh is sited within three natural boundaries the shiwalik hills, Patiala KI Rao
and Sukhna Choe.
The Shiwalik Mountains in the northwest form the backdrop in the horizon. The
floodplains of the two rivulets, Patiala Ki Rao and Sukhn a Choe define the in the
northwestern and southeastern edges. These floodplains are the vast open spaces
on the edge of the city.
Thus the genus loci of Chandigarh are the vast tilting plain, Shiwalik Mountains as
the backdrop and the open spaces of the f loodplains as the edges.
Landscape structure
The central rivulet (N -choe) has provided the central spine to the open space system
of the city. The N -Choe forms the city level open space, the leisure valley (NE-SW).
These linear ope n spaces are repeated are repeated at the sector level, ultimately
forming an interpenetrating grid of open spaces.

7.2
TRANSFORMATION OF THE LANDSCAPE RESOURCES- THE MODERN CHANDIGARH
CITY

Function : The function of the landscape changed from being an agricultural


productive landscape to an administrat ive capital city.

Components: The components of the pre -chandigarh rural landscape Abadi,


village pond, and the fields were replaced by capital complex, the central
business district, the residential sectors, the industrial area, the leisure valley, and
the sector greens.

Division of the land : the village abadi was delineated by the Lal Dora , individul
farms by the Khasra and the extents of the village farmlands by the revenue
records. These boundary divisions were changed by the imposition of The Grid, into
sectors.
12
Circulation : the village streets at the Abadi level, and the c art track at the inter -
village level was replaced by the hierarchy of the seven -V‟s.

Open space : the vocabulary of the rural space system, the cluster open space, the
village ch aupal, and the countryside were transformed into the neighborhood level
open space, the sector level open space, and the city level (leisure valley) open space.

Land: the land was essentially graded for the layout of roads and sectors.

Vegetation: Exotic vegetation was introduced. Flowering trees on city roads.

Rivulets and Ponds: The village ponds were reclaimed; the sukhna choe was dammed
to create a lake, the Sukhna Lake.

Thus the gridiron network of roads was superimposed on the rural landscape. The
grid cut across the natural drainage channels and undulations, the villages leveled,
and thus this rural landscape was transformed into a modern urban complex.

Plan showing the superimposition of grid plan


on the rural landscape
13
7.3
THE RESULTANT LANDSCAPE
7.3.1
THE CITY
The city extends between the two seasonal rivulets defining its natural
boundaries on the northwestern and southeastern sides. The monumental “ capitol
complex” comprising of the secretariat, high court and the assembly buildi ngs
crowns it towards the northeast. Two major axial roads cut through the city .one of
them is “ Jan Marg” (The People‟s Avenue), a stately avenue leading up to the
capital complex. The axial road “ Madhya Marg” (The Central Avenue) cuts
through the site h orizontally. At the crossing of the two axes lies the “ Civic Center”
housing the central business district and the local government.
These two axes provided the framework on which the components of the
city, namely the capital complex, the civic centre, th e neighborhood, the seven
V‟s, and the open spaces were arranged.

The Chandigarh Plan


14
7.3.2 THE SEVEN V’S
It is the system of traffic separation based on a scheme of organization,
which Le Corbusier termed “ Les Sept Vo ies”, the seven V‟s.
The seven V systems represents the Architect‟s attempt to develop a fully
organized, universally applicable system, establishing a breakdown of traffic into a
series of seven categories containing every level of circulation from arter ial roads
to apartment house corridors.

The Seven V’s

V1- represents the regional highway leading into the city from outside.

V2- forms the main horizontal axis of the town,”the Madhya Marg” intersecting the
street leading to the capital complex also a V2, “The Jan Marg”. This street borders
the Civic Center, and at the lower edge of the city the V2 continuity of “Jan Marg”
intersects another V2 .The V2 boulevards, designed ultimately to employ a system
of separated lanes, will accommodate all classes of traffic, fast and slow moving
vehicles, cycles and pedestrians.

Madhya Marg,the V 2
15
V 3 – Surrounding the residential
sectors and forming the grid
pattern of the city are the V3‟s,
the streets reserved for fast
moving motor traffic. Access to
the sec to rs from these streets is
limited, and there is no frontage
development permitted. The
street is treated, in fact, as
though it was a railway line,
and walls have been
constructed to restrict
pedestrian access. The sector is
thus planned to focus internally .
V 3,the sector -dividing road.

V 4 – Bisecting each sector is a v4 or a shopping street. This street, intentionally


open to a variety of traffic but permitting only relatively slow movement. Shops are
located only on the shady side of the street for co mfort and for eliminating the
necessity of frequent street crossing. The V4 geometric grid is replaced by a
somewhat irregular street.

V 4,The Market street.

V 5 – Is a loop road distributing


slow traffic within the confines
of the sector, inter secting the V
4 at two points.

V 5,the loop road


16
V 6 – are the roads leading to the houses.

V 6,the road leading to the residences

V 7 – Are the paths designed to carry pedestrians and cyclists through the park
belts of the city, which contain the schools and the playing fields. These paths
would also go underneath the V 3 roads and link sectors, thus making it
theoretically possible to traverse the entire city on foot through a park.

V 7,the pedestrian’s path


17
A SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE – A MODERN TREND OF CITY LANDSCAPE

Sustainable landscaping encompasses a variety of practices that have developed in response


to environmental issues. These practices are used in every phase of landscaping, including
design, construction, implementation and management of residential and commercial landscapes

A sustainable landscape is designed to be both attractive and in balance with the local climate
and environment and it should require minimal resource inputs. Thus, the design must be
“functional, cost-efficient, visually pleasing, environmentally friendly and maintainable" As part of
the concept called sustainable development it pays close attention to the preservation of limited
and costly resources, reducing waste and preventing air, water and soil pollution. Landscape
Maintenance practices greatly influence the waste produced and the cost of the maintenance
itself; such as using electric or gas hedge trimmers which degrade plant material rather than
using hand shears which create plant longevity, reduce the amount of waste over time, and
prevent the misshaping of plant material and eliminates the "Balls and Boxes that unskilled
gardeners create.(James Deagan, Prof Cal Poly Pomona Lecture 1980), In addition, compost,
fertilization, grass cycling, pest control measures that avoid or minimize the use of chemicals,
integrated pest management, using the right plant in the right place, appropriate use of turf,
irrigation efficiency and xeriscaping or water-wise gardening are all components of sustainable
landscaping.
BENEFITS
The geographic location can determine what is sustainable due to differences in precipitation and
temperature. For example, the California Waste Management Board emphasizes the link
between minimizing environmental damage and maximizing one‟s bottom line of urban
commercial landscaping companies. In California, the benefits of landscapes often do not
outweigh the cost of inputs like water and labor. However, using appropriately selected and
properly sited plants may help to ensure that maintenance costs are lower than they otherwise
would be due to reduced chemical and water inputs.

Sustainable landscaping solutions


Some of the solutions being developed are:
 Reduction of stormwater run-off through the use of bio-swales, rain gardens and green
roofs and walls.
 Reduction of water use in landscapes through design of water-wise garden techniques
(sometimes known as xeriscaping)
 Bio-filtering of wastes through constructed wetlands
 Landscape irrigation using water from showers and sinks, known as gray water
 Integrated Pest Management techniques for pest control
 Creating and enhancing wildlife habitat in urban environments
 Energy-efficient landscape design in the form of proper placement and selection of shade
trees and creation of wind breaks
 Permeable paving materials to reduce stormwater run-off and allow rain water to infiltrate
into the ground and replenish groundwater rather than run into surface water
 Use of sustainably harvested wood, composite wood products for decking and other
landscape projects, as well as use of plastic lumber
 Recycling of products, such as glass, rubber from tires and other materials to create
landscape products such as paving stones, mulch and other materials
 Soil management techniques, including composting kitchen and yard wastes, to maintain
and enhance healthy soil that supports a diversity of soil life

You might also like