Urban Forest Movement(s)

Abstract

Currently cities are becoming more densified, resulting in overpopulated areas with fewer green spaces. Together with this rising health care expenses caused by mental health and current environmental design questions such as water nuisance, heath island effect, densification demands and creating a healthy living environment, leads to questioning current city structures. This thesis rethinks existing city structures, by creating a new way of designing cities which respond to current environmental design questions and offers restorative nature. It explores methods of creating restorative nature and by researching restorative theories and their affiliation to movement and bodily experience. Movement acts as a tool for designing with an eye-level - and sensorial experience which are both crucial for perceiving nature and its beneficial effects. To design a new city structure, a historical overview is created to research healthy living environments and how these can be spatially recognised in landscape structures, urban plans and ideal city movements. The Garden City movement is used as a starting point for the research. From this research the Urban Forest Movement is designed, working through three scales: the city/region, a main structure of the city and the site. The movement focusses on creating healthy living environments by reacting to current environmental design questions and by emphasising the importance of how green spaces are experienced. The generic model is applied to the city of Den Haag, testing it in the process. The site was chosen because of its history and its different relation to the surrounding landscape due to the lack of a city wall. To apply the Movement, it is adapted to fit the design brief that is concluded from an analysis of the site. A vision is created for the city/region scale that focusses on the main spatial framework, densification and green spaces. One of these elements of the spatial framework is further elaborated, zooming in to the line scale. To implement the ideas on the lowest scale on how to create restorative green spaces which help to create healthy living environments, a design on eye-level perspective and movement is made. These crucial design methods are used to design a park along the line. Here elevations, buildings, water structures, materialisation and a planting plan are used to create various bodily experiences through movement. Three different movements are introduced in the park; Gliding, Grazing and Wandering, offering different levels of emerging in nature and experiencing its restorative effects. Finally, conclusions and limitations of the thesis are discussed and evaluated to provide future suggestions.