Research-Based Design Approaches in Historic Garden Renovation

Abstract

The renewal of historic gardens, landscapes, and sites has grown to be a current issue in Central and Eastern Europe. Based on scientific research, the Department of Garden Art of the Szent István University, Faculty of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism has been dealing with landscape renewal since 1963 on regional, settlement, and garden scales, too. More than 50 years of experience has already proved the advantage of such a research-based design approach in garden and landscape renewal processes, Landscape Architecture has developed from a very practical basis. The purpose of this paper is to show the most significant conclusions of our historic garden research of castle gardens from the Carpathian Basin, focusing on the importance of visual connections designed initially on the sites. Using case studies, the paper intends to explore how proper landscape design in historic environments is achieved. The historical value cannot be simplified or understood as the notion of "old", the heritage being represented by the all-time valuable garden features and elements, independent from their formation in time. In addition to the historical authenticity of the actual use, the social needs and sustainability are important aspects, which must be integrated into heritage protection and reclamation. order to create atmosphere or staffage. These prominent design elements used as a compositional center, which also served as signals and had a symbolic meaning, marked the focal points of the visual axes [5][6][7][8][9].Regardless of the era, however, it can be stated that during modern garden history, the most important compositional goal of the creators was always the design of a garden image and that of the sight of the garden in time and space; also, the creation of ideal visual links between the garden and the landscape, that is, the view meant to fascinate.The creation and display of landscape elements is the result of a creative and conscious spatial arrangement. These elements vary depending on whether they are natural or built elements, and from this difference, a different cultural value ensues. Thus, the visual connections ensuring their display are, in some cases, difficult to acknowledge; occasionally, they even transmit different messages to different segments of the society. That is also a reason why cautious and thorough interpretation is needed when assessing their aesthetic value: alongside the examination of the physical appearance, the analysis of the emotions and of the atmosphere evoked by the landscape is also essential [10,11].The castle garden has thousand-fold connections to its surroundings. At the time of its formation, it was not a simple ornamental garden but featured as an indispensable part of a complex, cultural-historical, ecological and-last but not least-economic system. That is what made it possible for the garden to function in the long run and be sustainable at the same time. Thus, the subject matter of the study is a consciously planned ecological-technical system, both historic and arti...

6th Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning

“…Finally Albert Fekete and Lazio Kollányi [7] utilize research based design techniques applied to historic castle gardens in the Caspian Basin Hungary. Such knowledge will be useful for historic interpretation as well as garden restoration.…”

Lost Gardens: From Knowledge to Revitalization and Cultural Valorization of Natural Elements

“…In addition to clarifying the various objective aspects of architecture, landscape, and gardening, these historical sources can reveal the subjective-semantic aspects and the aesthetic principles of the construction period [57,60]. In general, a documentary approach is well considered in the literature, and archival sources and old representations have been widely used to obtain historical data [10,12,13,31].…”

“…Therefore, when interpreting gardens, it is essential to evaluate their relationship and complex system of connections with the environment and society as well [5]. The aesthetic value of the past landscape must be cautiously evaluated, along with a thorough examination of their physical appearance, and an analysis of the emotions and atmosphere evoked by the surrounding landscape [13,97]. As a tool for assessing landscape complexity, the "landscape and community map" represents both tangible (artefacts, works, and spatial organization), and intangible (meaning attributions, customs, and traditions) aspects of landscape heritage to illustrate the way that landscape components relate to residents' identities [96].…”

“…Archaeological sites often contain traces of ancient gardens, even if their structure and the floristic patterns are not more evident [5,[10][11][12][13][14]. Relevant cases of lost gardens, i.e., sites where only few remains of a garden survive, come from the Egyptian area (e.g., Karnak [15][16][17]), and the Near East and Persian context, such as the Royal Garden of Cyrus the Great in Iran [18,19].…”

“…In ancient lost gardens, the main issue is the disconnection and lack of understanding of their significant historical and cultural values that need to be protected, promoted, actualized, and made available and clear to the broad public [24,33]. Although the study of ancient lost gardens has become a more popular discipline in recent decades [4,13,[34][35][36], most studies analyze architectural, archaeological, or archaeobotanical data separately [19,26,28,37,38]. These studies are fundamental, but they should also be addressed for their revitalization (renewal of the garden's characteristics) and valorization (enhancement of the garden's value).…”