مجله منظر
پیاپی 17 (زمستان 1390)

Scholars have mainly insisted on the formal geometry of Persian gardens as a fourfold plan. Here I will discuss that this theory does not correspond to the original documents showing the plans of Safavid gardens. Through the study of a treatise written on planting a chaharbagh, we shall see that its layout does not correspond to the plan of a garden with crossing channels, as it is usually sustained, but to a great garden reflecting the whole created world. The idea of the garden as the image of the world in the mazdean thought, re-elaborated in the philosophy of light, suggests that garden studies needs a step beyond its mere layout. The Safavid chronicles, reveal a clear attention towards the undefiled nature in their garden making that has not been sufficiently underlined. We shall see that the essence of the garden is not linked to a specific plan, but rather to the realtion it establishes with the undefiled nature. The poems written in praise of Shah Tahmasb and his gardens in Qazvin reflect the idea of the king and his garden mirroring the creator and the world. The comparison between a drawing by Kaempfer and a miniature depicting shah Tahmasb’s garden in Qazvin leads to the understanding of the garden as encompassing the whole world. The undefiled nature and its view is desired beyond the garden walls. We shall see how the inclusion of undefiled nature, as an essential part of the image of the garden is achieved through different strategies, manifesting an idea of the garden in which the king as the king of the world recreates the image of the world. The hypothesis in this article mentions that the word caharbag does not thus correspond to the plan of a garden divided in four by watercourses, but denotes a great garden.

Due to its multidisciplinary nature, landscape criticism requires a comprehensive and objective approach. This approach leads to "metacriticism" supported by scientific criteria which give it scientific legitimacy. Determining values, classification and weighting facilitate scientific criticism. Focusing on the scientific character of landscape criticism, this article discusses the differences between landscape hermeneutics and compares art criticism with the critical interpretation of a project. It then introduces the sometimes contradictory, relative and subjective values attributed to landscape projects and highlights the relation between epistemological and ethical questions raised in landscape criticism. On this basis, the article offers solutions including the production of criteria, a prioritization of these criteria and the development of a multidisciplinary perspective in landscape criticism. These solutions lead to the introduction of a hypothesis that envisages a new scientific field encompassing landscape criticism. The author is optimistic over the advent of a type of metacriticism that is both ethical and scientifically accurate.

Discovering every new document in the history of this homeland will lead us to a profounder self cognition. Historical documents are in a mystic language. The earliest map of Tehran is a proving document that can interpret Tehran’s characteristics which are so highly demanded for architects and urban designers, since they rely on historic values to invest in their designs. This map is a valuable document that contains property system, historic division of Tehran lands, the place of elements that are not in existence any more, the roads and paths that participate in creating and reminding the public memory and dozens of other points.

Post modernism was initiated as a logical result of resenting modernists antinative policies of in the 60s. Postmodernists considered the context, geography, history and culture of every event of the society as the most important factors in defining identity. In the field of landscape architecture, since Land Art movements in the 60s, the contextualists have taken the quality of geographic features of the site into consideration. There was wide range of attention to the European classic art of gardenn ing since the early 80s and the French garden became the sample for many landscape archin tects of the country. Undoubtedly, there was a sense of pride for French history in these apn proaches. The gardens were not valuable only for their open spaces, but also for their fertiln ity. Basically, gardening was of a great value in the French history and the gardeners were engaged in the court. The vivid role of Versailles Nationale Superieured’ Horticulture Ecole in the revival of this art cannot be taken for granted; a school which educated well known landscape architects such as Alain Provost. Alain Provost is unquestionably unique among landscape architects who are influn enced by historical gardening. He has reused the historic French landscape and created the first postmodern Andre Citroen Park in the world in the 60s by impressible naturalist apn proaches of their time and being influenced by British gardening that had a tendency ton ward organic creations. The track of historic influence can be found in both physical and symbolic aspects of his design. The reason for this change of approach can be sought in his academic education in Versailles Nationale Superieured’ Horticulture Ecole. The significant factors of French gardening such as topiary, playing with water and predominant geometric order are the prevailing aspects of his designs that have been modernized in his special way. Alain Provost has been influenced by minimaln ism with the idea of eliminating the unnecesn sary, but in contrary to minimalists he doesn’t ignore the external elements such as the hisn tory of the region and uses historical elements in his designs as identical symbols; the symn bols that reminds the Parisian favorite originaln ity and demonstrates their magnificent history. He just excludes the luxury, exaggeration and antiquity and replaces them with modern man terials. In his contexualism approach, the culn tural aspects are prevailing and the historical landscape elements have an objective impact on revitalizing the cultural features of historical landscape in every urban landscape. Provost’s projects are perfect examples of continuity of landscape throughout history. The classic form of French gardens have been trann sited through time and influenced by diverse events to be expressed in a modern way. The French gardens are fully accomplished in the city gardens by Alain Provost.

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.

During the recent decades the urn ban human settlements, either through extenn sion of their physical and structural boundaries or through the influence of ecological footprint in their adjacent pristine natural areas, are den stroying and demolishing these intact natural areas more rapidly than the past. The foremost example of it would be the road transport netn works. Such projects with infrastructural funcn tions in natural territories are currently a sign nificant proportion of designs that are planned and projected by landscape architects; it has provided an opportunity to create a complen mentary landscaping for both the projects and nature. In other words, the landscape approach based on the common language of landscape project in human territorial involvement is an effective strategy in creating a harmonious combination of functional and technical ren quirements of the project with site potentials and achieving sustainable development. In European countries and specially France, the road transport networks have high opportunin ties for development due to its appropriate clin mate and specific ecosystem. There exist three main approaches in management of transporn tation infrastructure development which are the Sustainable Design, Improving Life Quality and Steady Growth. Therefore, during the previn ous two decades the associated operation and management organizations try to arrange their special policies by assigning these projects to landscape architects to achieve an ecological sustainable development. The grand project of A20 Auto route, done by Allain Provost and Allain Cousseran together, that is one of the roads connecting the north to the south of France, is the best example of this particular design. This project has been widely admired for being a nature – oriented pass with intricate topography and specific biology, which had been the most important challenge, as well as unitized and intelligent combination of ecological and natural approaches to provide functional protection and optimization. The sculptural earthwork in the land biology using geometric hierarchy and scale reading in comn bination with the appropriate vegetation pron vides the aesthetic aspects with the ecological contextualism. The project attempts to adjust the visual boundaries and the nature to minin mize the contrast between the natural environn ment and pristine lands. Such approaches in spatial organization have converted a connectn ing road that splits the natural territories into pieces by its self-indicated lines to harmonic intervention in the natural ecosystem. To wit, landscape approach to development infran structures has provided the chance to accomn plish human settlement influence on natural and ecological territories in a sustainable way maintaining biodiversity.

Owing to Industrialization and enhancement of man-made industrial environments as well as shortage of green landscape, the parks were defined as “a context to preserve a sense of nature” in cities. Regarding the enhancen ment of urban spaces and growth of industrial sites, the need for green spaces and reclaman tion of industrial sites becomes more crucial and the philosophy of designing parks, reston ration of the urban decay and improvement of green space comes to existence. Linking the old regions to new and modern region of the city, the green space plays an important role as a joint between the regions which provides the regeneration of old urban decay. However, designing parks along rivers, paths and linking the modern and dull fabrics together are new steps toward regeneration of lost nature in the modern life.

Benefiting from a rich background of gardening, French sites have been allocated to considerable historic gardens known as the greatest human cultural heritage. There have been diverse approaches and theories about encountering these historical sites in the past 100 years. As a result multiple similar and conn trary theories including the least reclamation to the most reconstruction have been discussed technically. Among the mentioned theories, cultural landscape and preservation of hisn torical garden have been the most negotiated preservation and socio-cultural heritage and site restoration theories in the past decades. ICOMOS, the international council on monun ments and sites, had held three congresses of Venice Charter (1966), Burra Charter (1981) and Florence Charter (1982) about the convern sation of monuments and sites. The Florence Charter focuses mainly on the historic gardens and considers them as historic memoires and gives great importance to its natural and culn tural characteristics. Historic gardens are a part of cultural landn scape which are resulted out of the mutual relations and interactions between culture and nature. Taking the landscape semantic aspects into consideration is more important than the physical features in restoration of such garn dens. Therefore, maintaining and preserving the physics of a garden are not effective in conn tinuity of garden values and will lead to loss of these cultural values. Gardens, as a foremost example of landn scape which have been showcased in diverse historic and cultural aspects, have natural and ecological layers as well as valuable historic and cultural layers; As a result, their reclaman tion cannot be fulfilled in a confined and limited framework. It requires a flexible approach to provide the landscape designer with recognin tion of the cultural and historic landscape of the site in order to restore the garden based on the reclamation and preservation principles. Presn ervation and continuity of natural and historic values that reveal the culture and beliefs of the people in a region and demonstrate the intern action between human and nature throughout history are the main objectives in reclamation of a cultural landscape. The revival and reclan mation of a cultural landscape and bringing it back to life and existence will eventually lead to environmental and natural reclamation as well as continuity of human and the surrounding nan ture interaction. Alain Provost’s approach in the cultural landn scape project of Villarceaux Park was taking into consideration the historic background and the specific qualities and characteristics of French gardens and embodying them in minimal and abstract shapes. In this project preservation of historic elements of the site has been the main interests of the landscape architect that have been formed over time and adapted to the modern life. Holding public and cultural events such as concerts in the park has been very efn fective to its reclamation and its presence in the daily lives of citizens. This paper tries to discuss Alain Provost’s approaches to historic gardens and their reclamation through introducing and analyzing the Villarceaux Park.