Design Project - Landscape Architecture
Paskuqani Lake Area: a city border or an integration area?
The site chosen is the area of Paskuqani between Tirana and Kamza Municipality, in the northern area of Tirana city center. One can describe the landscape as a transitional/peripheral/border landscape, which has come under heavy pressure since the fall of socialism/communism.
The area in the city plan is foreseen as a future city park, similar somehow to the existing park in south Tirana. If boulevard and ring roads will be built the impact over this area might be big. Question is: what and how? Good or bad? Can other instruments of urban design and landscape planning/architecture be applied? Can it be elaborated or remained a natural landscape? What can be suggestions for local authorities? Can we draft a concept and detailed proposal and handle to authorities via a publication or exhibitions? Or is this just another workshop? This questions need answers by all?
General Course Description
This course includes studies in architectural, urban, and open space systems analysis and design. The studies will include methods and tools of urban fabric analysis, understanding city form as a result of historical, cultural and social processes, created over time and juxtaposed on a specific physical site.
The course will be delivered through a series of lectures and seminar discussions of selected readings, parallel to guided studio work. See announcing e-mails on Lecture Series & on Workshop
The primary phases of the work will be:
a) Reading and analysis of open space through visual observation, and through image determination
b) Reading and analysis of the interface between natural and urban morphology, architectural typology and their relationship to process
c) Applied knowledge, conclusions and illustrations of the major themes of the course
Course Objectives
a) To provide the student with the basic knowledge and tools for reading and analyzing urban fabric
b) To sensitize the student to the connection between context, identity and solution
c) To raise awareness of the issues of the continuum of private/public domain and functionality in the urban fabric
d) To guide the student in the application of theoretical and practical knowledge to a concrete planning problem through the use of appropriate and effective tools and methods - Case Study: Paskuqani Lake
Relief
Old Map
Approach:
Aim ‐ Landscape Architecture for architects and urban designers;
Subject - transitional urban landscapes in Tirana, merging urban connection areas.
As the students are trained as architects it seems important to bring the main subject of this design workshop into their minds: landscape.
What is meant with this term, which understanding of landscape do we have, which meanings does it have, which kinds of landscapes are existing? Professional inputs will be given on these questions, as impulses for a discussion to be held with the students. A focus should lie on the individual elaboration of a concept of landscape, which fits to the site chosen.
The framework for the workshop will be provided by a three dimensional understanding of landscape: Landscape as Product, Process and Idea. Looking on the landscape around Paskuqan Lake will be guided by these dimensions. The student´s work with the site should consist of field research and desk research, employing the contextual planning as a basic principle of landscape architecture.
Sections under Study
Tirana-Durres Concept Sketch
Tirana Spatial Concept Sketch
Greater Tirana
Tirana Spatial Development Strategy
Method of contextual planning:
Field research: Urban sections - Grady Clay, cultural landscape studies - J.B. Jackson - documentation of situations (spatial, social, aesthetic…).
Imagined section is to be elaborated by students through the urban fabric around Paskuqan Lake, documentation can be made with photos, sketches, artifacts, etc.
The topic is on looking at these sections under the aspect of “borders”. The students should search for anything that could be understood as “border” and define its grade or power. This research can be done in two scales. Then we would have a kind of catalog of “borders” that allow us to understand the need of borders for saving any green area against further development.
Desk research: Urban analysis: thematic mapping – agriculture, infrastructure, topography, development of informal housing (property rights), land use, social/economic interactions, anesthetics – Data sources must be identified/prepared? – In producing thematical maps, an act of individual interpretation is inherent. Thus, the step of deciding, which information is relevant and can be used as a characterization of a site / fabric defines the next decisions to come.
Estimating processes – development of scenarios: Taking the dynamics of informal settlements into account, it could be appropriate to discuss some future developments, employing scenario technique. The scenarios could help to define some of the main drivers of the processes identified and build a basis, which role a future Paskuqan Lake Park can play in this fabric, both for Tirana and Kamza at Greater Tirana scale.
Definition of Landscape types: - Bringing the different branches of discussion and analysis. Together, a typology of existing landscapes, landscape elements and fragments can be made. Together with the scenario´s outcomes, concepts of landscape will be articulated, which build the basis for developing planning principles, general guidelines and design approaches.
