Vladimir shimko

Architectural and design creation of urban environment

Textbook for students in design and architecture

Creation of urban environment as a specific design task was first realized by professional community in the second half of XX century, when it became clear that different visual components are integrated to create an image of the city.

There was a time when 'city interiors' were dominated by architec­ture, decorative and applied art. Today aesthetics of the environment depend, primarily, on the extent to which practical needs of the city-dwellers are satisfied (whenever the city is supplied with adequate trans­port system, accessible information, sufficient number of communication spaces etc). This situation results in a fact that most elements of the envi­ronment are designed for different functional areas, from landscaping and engineering to scenery. Every one of these 'urban arts' possesses its own artistic goals, methods and merits, and the essential point in working with the environment today is to create a synthesis of all these elements. This synthesis must be based on a language of visual organization of our spa­tial environment, a language that is common for all areas concerned.

Fundamental base for this language is a concept of environmental composition - a coordinated support by all forms of environmental creativ­ity of a main artistic concept of space in any given context.

A review of actual environmental design works given in this book proves justifiability and perspective possibilities of compositional approach to environmental design. It shows that we are dealing with a special kind of compositions, combining tasks and methodologies of different arts that influence emotional and artistic ambience of any environment. The city is an area where functional and spatial aspects where creative work could be applied are countless, and specialists of co-related professions not only pass their knowledge and skills to architects, but unavoidably adopt some architectural methodology to their own work. As a result the city develops specific 'environmental spaces' (engineering, landscape, informational), which are formed according to their own - and architectural principles. And composition of 'ordinary' architectural spaces is more and more influenced by design equipment of the city life.

Viewing the terms 'urban environment' and 'urban design' from the above-stated perspective, this book summarizes the principles and peculi­arities of designing elements of environmental ensemble, defining charac­ter and extent to which they participate in creation of a contemporary city, describes their structure, development stages and aesthetic possibilities.

The book is divided in two parts. The first one describes traditional methods of environmental creativity. The second deals with deformations of these methods in contemporary practice. The comparison of their gen­eral principles lead to emergence of a complete system of recommenda­tions, which brings together historically conditioned 'architectural' methods of environmental design and contemporary 'designer' methods, which emerged as a response to modern conditions. Thus the city environment of our times is seen as a new and special type of art synthesis, widening conventional boundaries of artist-viewer relationship by acquiring aesthet­ic potential of design and engineering components of the environmental complex. Which, in its turn, brings on new, previously unknown methods of design process that need further study, but can potentially enrich function­al and artistic productiveness of design work.

The book is intended for students and tutors in design and architectur­al schools.