Yuhan Wang

Senescence in Arcadia

Landscape Architecture - MLA

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

wsdshisd@gmail.com

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Skills & Experience

ArcGIS
Rhino+Grasshopper
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
Auto CAD

Project description

My project focuses on improving the happiness and well-being of the elderly through landscape methods to face the aging problem in the Azores. In the field trip of Semester 1, I applied anthropological methods to landscape architecture, and tried to solve the problems in the life of the elderly in the Azores by understanding their daily life and their appeals to the city.

My strategy on the urban scale is to change the urban green infrastructure to meet the standard that all elderly residents in the city can enjoy green space within 15min living circle.

On the Public park scale, I attribute the difficulties encountered by the elderly to the decline of physical function. Their five senses are no longer as acute as those of young people, and their ability to perceive the environment is becoming worse. That may not capture the seriousness of the phenomenon. Although this is a physical condition, it can also lead to some psychological problems in the elderly, such as loss of self-confidence, depression and so on.

In order to improve the happiness and quality of life of the elderly, in the public park design, I reasonably arranged landscape elements to bring the elderly a good sensory experience.

I focused on the connection between the site and the whole city, and generated corresponding functions. I added some urban functions into the site to realize a connection, and then determined the functional zoning of the site.

on this basis of it, I explore the landscape elements, and distinguish them according to the seasons, so as to explore the different sensory experiences brought by the change of seasons in the future.

I visualized different sensory experiences to understand the locations in the site where the sensory experience was good and set sensory amplifiers at those locations. By using these amplifiers, older people can temporarily perceive their environment in the same way that younger people do, in addition to having a good sensory experience. This is the meaning of the project theme Senescence in Arcadia.

Triangle Islands Aging Condition

The mapping shows the population statistics of the six municipalities in the Triangle lslands. It can be seen that Horta is the only town that can be called a city among these six municipalities, and has the largest population scale. Therefore, I choose Horta as the site for my research on aging and design enhancement under the condition that the degree and proportion of aging are similar.

Proposed Urban Green Infrastructure

Why here is a Productive Landscape

Research has shown that the maximum slope for seniors to walk on is 5%, so to understand the change in topography across Horta I started by using grass hopper modelling and marking out areas where the slope exceeded 5% and avoiding designing in them.

Distance is also an important factor in aging design, as seniors will travel less often compared to younger people due to their limited legs. In the case of age-friendly design, a fifteen-minute living circle has proven to be a more comfortable distance for seniors in their daily lives. So I used ArcGIS (using actual road distances rather than straight-line distances to improve accuracy) to calculate the mutual coverage of urban green spaces and each residential area corresponding 15-minute living circle, and to marked out residential area where urban green spaces did not cover the 15-minute living circle.

By overlaying these two criteria, I found that the northern part of the site not covered by the 15min living circle could be improved by converting parts of the existing farmland into productive landscapes for the nearby residential areas that lack green space.

Why here is a Public Park

In choosing the location of the park, I researched the land use of the site and found three available sites in the city, but considering the urban scale and population scale of Horta, I decided to choose one of them as the future city Public Park. By scoring the three sites in terms of topography, proximity to the city centre and size of the area, and eventrually choose as the drawing shows.

Public Park Master Plan

According to the strategy of connecting functional zones in the Public Park with existing functions in the Horta urban area, woodland Tranquil zone, Productive Landscape, Besides Multifunction Meadow (Celebration Space). I divided the site into 7 functional zones, including Children Play Space, Seniors' Home & Bakery, Horticulture Therapy Garden, Viewing Platform.