Transfer of Social Uses, Meanings and Values Through Landscape Design; Case of Karagöz Square

Abstract

In this study, how landscape architecture students associate the traces of the past of a given site with their conceptual approaches and spatial components in the design process is discussed. Karagöz Square, located in the city center of Trabzon, has undergone dramatic and mostly negative changes from the past to the present in functional, visual and semantic terms. the area which is under urban transformation process in order to revitalize, to make it a part of urban life and in this context to regain its old functions has been given to students as the subject of design within the scope of Environmental Design Project IV course. Within the scope of this paper, how students investigated the past of design area and physical and social dimensions of collective memory, how they reflected on their conceptual approaches and main design decisions, and then through which spatial components and usage types these decisions were reflected on projects are determined and explained. In a design group of 9 students, 5 designs, conceptual approaches of which were based on the history of the city and the design area and traces left in collective memory were discussed in detail. As a result of the content analysis of the presentations and reports of the students it was determined that some students were inspired by the past functional (such as socialization) and semantic dimensions of the area (such as entertainment and play) or the physical components of the area (such as olive trees, amusement park-entertainment equipment). The other students were inspired by the historical features of the city of Trabzon (the empires of the past) or the traces of cultural features in the society such as Trabzonspor and determined their design approaches based on these. In line with these, spatial components and usage types-activities in the final products are detailed in this study. How collective memory can be a tool for determining conceptual approaches in landscape design is also discussed.