Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Great care and knowledge are required to assess the values of public parks. Many aspects have to be considered to make the assessments reliable and credible. Care and respect for the site and its users are necessary parts of such an assessment.
Stockholm City Museum releases in 2011 a document which describes a new system for assessing the cultural historical value of parks and green areas in Stockholm, a city with a great development pressure. In order to evaluate the public realm basic knowledge about the sites’ history is needed.
Three different parks in Stockholm have been investigated. They were designed between 1926-1955 with similar ideas in mind. Nowadays they are used in other ways than the architects planned for. It shows how difficult it is to calculate the future residents’ needs and wishes. Parks with similar cultural historical values can be estimated in different ways and used differently by the population today. Therefore observations that investigate the social life at the sites today were carried out in spring 2011. The purpose of the observations was also to study the functions and features that attract people in the parks today. The parks attraction can depend on features such as location or other popular activities in the surrounding area.
Literature studies are the basis of the investigation. Through reading I understood the architects' original aim at the three sites Ålstensparken, Marabouparken and Norr Mälarstrand. The parks’ shape and feeling can only be experienced on site and this has been done by observations. The users' activities were also observed while visiting the sites.
The purpose of the study is to investigate the current use of the parks in relation to the original function and aim. I point out the users’ needs in contrast to the cultural historical values alone.
The studies of three parks from the same era with similar underlying ideas demonstrated large differences in current use, despite the similar origin of aim. The above classification method is discussed and compared to the three parks surveyed.