Park Design
Park Design Characteristics |
The park is a well-used place.
People of different ages, genders, and backgrounds use a park on a regular
basis during all parts of the day, week and year. A good park is visible and
easy access by various means of transportation. A park should be
comfortable, with a good image and possess such amenities as seating,
information, food concessions, bike racks, and bulletin boards. These
elements make a park not only attractive but enticing for people of all
ages. Most of all, a park should be a sociable place where people go to
observe the passing scene, meet friends, and interact with a wide range of
people different from themselves.
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Ideal Park Elements |
1. Access and Circulation—A park
should allow people alternative choices of movement to provide physical permeability.
2. Visibility—A park should also allow for visual permeability allowing people to see in and out of an area. 3. Lighting—Lighting improves the night time legibility, use, and enjoyment of a site. 4. Diversity—Parks should provide variety in physical features, activities, and users. 5. Signage and park information 6. Discourage Isolation encourage sociability |
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Waterfront Park Activities |
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Park Design
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    There are four main requirements in creating a successful public place:
Accessibility
In order to create an accessible park, we must look at its connection to its surroundings both physical and visual. This place should have sidewalks leading to and from where people want to go, and should be fairly easy for people to walk to enter the site. Comfortable
Comfort is the most important aspect of the four requirements. If people are not comfortable in the park, they will not stay. Uses and activities are important to consider because with design you can accommodate for the activities that you want to happen. The last element that needs to be designed for is sociability. When you create a place that people like to meet, it begins to draw more and more people, and the site becomes more successful. In order for a park to be successful, there must be certain activities that take place, this includes both passive and active activities. While there are many possibilities as to what activities could be accommodated in the park it is important to consider the activities that are already existing. These things include:
Bike Tours, Camping, Golfing, Ice Skating, Horseback Riding, Sledding, Para-sailing, Snowmobiling, Lake Cruises, Sailing, Skiing -Tennis
Through my research and understanding a park needs certain elements to be successful. These include such things as:
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Emscher Park
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It is useful to look at Emscher Park in Germany
as a case study of park design. Designers implemented a reuse scheme
in this park, where some of the older buildings
were restored and used as museum pieces and a cultural center.
Over 1300 companies exist in Emscher Park. They employ over 17,000 people. There is no housing for employees inside the park, but there are residential areas just outside the parks boundaries.
The business section of the park is for light manufacturing, distribution, and commercial activities. Inside the park certain areas are zoned for businesses, commercial, and industrial development. When dealing with the landscape designers took a conservation approach. By retaining the existing topography and specified native plants, they preserved the site's natural character. The reuse of older building that were already on the site, and working around the businesses that were already existing made this project successful, economically and environmentally. The image in Figure 1 show architectural approach of juxtaposing modern buildings and traditional ones. In spite of the high contrast there is a sensitivity to scale and a recognition of the past
Figure1: Merging New and Traditional
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Images of Sydney Walton Park all images from Kyle
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Pocket Parks |
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