Context: guaranty of conti No17/ Winter 2012

The contextual approach in landn scape design is capable to consider what is beyond the form and physical features of the context and acknowledge the context as a set of physical, historical and cultural factors. In contextual studies three main fields of physical and socio-cultural are discussable; in physin cal contextualism the elements of the study are not assessed and studied alone, but they are analyzed in a wider environmental context. The historicists consider the continuity of hisn tory as an important principle and they believe that if a society isolates itself from its past, it has ignored the past efforts done by man. The socio-cultural contextualists believe that the culture creates rules and reflects them in difn ferent ways such as forms. A superficial look to the concept of contextualism leads to a degran dation in meaning according to the surroundn ing body, while contextualism has a profound meaning beyond coordination with the physical features. In Alain Provost’s projects the contextual ideas are formed beyond the physical features of the context. He considers the context as a historical event that have been affected by the social and cultural aspect of life and embodied in the project. In other words, the context in his projects appears as a combination of physical, historical and social elements. In case we confine his contextualism conn cepts to physical and historical features of the context, the Parc de la Courneuve and Thames Barrier Park are expected to be categorized in romantic English gardens, while the Parc de la Courneuve reminds the English landscapn ing with its bushes and in the Thames Barrier Park the geometric and square plan and the existing topiaries cannot be explained. In these mentioned parks the public memory, based on the culture and lifestyle of the people, has ben come a part of the context and shows Provost’s awareness in using the context that includes factors beyond the history and the physics in order to relate to the culture of the people. For the modern man the context includes the nan ture and history as well as ecological and techn nological factors which are correlated to the modern life. Provost acknowledges the context as a set of physical, historical, cultural and social factors in his comprehensive definition of the context. It is important to emphasize on what provides more satisfaction to people in consequence of the fact that landscape architecture is highly associated with people for its people-oriented characteristic. This paper discuses Provost’s contextual theory through an adaptive comparn ison of Parc de la Courneuve and Thames Barn rier Park which were his first and last projects.