Authors

Dutsev Mikhail V.
ARCHITECTURAL AND ARTISTIC TREATMENT OF OPEN CITY SPACES (WITH REFERENCE TO EUROPEAN CITIES)

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (40) December, 2012

The timeliness of this article is determined by the need for an evidence-based approach to the layout of open city spaces that would ensure their consistency and integrity.

Being the scope of this research, open city spaces are considered in terms of methods that may be applied to ensure their architectural and artistic integration.

The author identifies the objective and subjective frameworks, or “genes” of architectural and artistic integration - conceptual, spatial, temporal, figurative, symbolic, and contextual - and supports his proposed theoretical premises by a review of architectural practice relating to the layout of open spaces in European cities.

The article puts forward a number of basic approaches to architectural and artistic treatment of open city spaces. The comprehensive system of conceptual integration in the unity of its overlapping components is constituted by:

1. An artistic concept – a space of arts synthesis:
- a concept of spatial integration (synthesis);
- a concept of temporal integration (synthesis);
- a concept of spatial-temporal integration (synthesis).

2. A concept of social adaptation– an interactive space:
- a play concept – a space for entertainment and celebration;
- a multivariate dialogue concept – a communicative space;
- a concept of emotional comfort field.

3. A contextual concept:
- a concept of "literary" (illusory, imaginary) context – an "ideal" (conceptual) space of author's design;
- a concept of historical and cultural context;
- a concept of continuity of city environment – an integral (uniform) city space;
- an ecological concept – an organic natural space.

4. A concept of innovative solutions:
- an engineering design concept;
- a mediative concept – an information and media space;
- an ergonomic concept – a convenient space for human living.

5. A concept of multivariate synthesis – an integral open city space.