Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The urban landscapes are rapidly transforming in order to meet
the demands of population growth as well as dealing with issues of
climate change. At the same time the health of urban dwellers is
urgently declining due to chronic stress and lifestyle factors. This
master thesis in Landscape Architecture explores how the aspect
of human wellbeing can be integrated in the urban development
process through design studies. The theme of the thesis - healthy
everyday landscapes - is based on the assumption that in order to deal
with issues of health in cities the exposure to healthy environments
needs to be increased in the everyday lives of urban dwellers.
Nyhamnen that is a new development area centrally located in
the harbor of Malmö became the object of this study as it is in an
ongoing process of development.
The thesis combines research on health with design thinking as
well as explores how contemporary urban planning resonates with
the theme of healthy everyday landscapes. The process includes
theoretical studies, site studies through an internship at an
architectural firm and design studies.
The process revealed that combining research on health with the
discipline of design is a complex task. It requires knowledge of both
fields as well as skills to translate it to a specific site and context. The
process also revealed that connections between sites are essential
to promote healthy everyday landscapes and is therefore difficult
to apply on an isolated part of the landscape as within the plan
area of Nyhamnen. Thus, the outcome of this process is a green
strategy that exceeds the boundaries of Nyhamnen and suggests
both an adjoining restorative nature area as well as a connective
public path to the inner city. The proposal would therefore need
to be a part of a larger strategy for the city. At the same time the
process shows that designing healthy everyday landscapes requires
on-site experiences that need to be a part of the early stages of an
urban design process. The thesis therefore suggests that the theme
of healthy everyday landscapes is integrated in large-scale strategies
for the city as well as detailed design proposals, and they need to be
planned and designed in shifting scales and focal points.
The aim of the thesis was to explore how human wellbeing can
be integrated in an urban development process. But the outcome
of it reveals that healthy everyday landscapes can be combined
with other measurements for urban resilience and sustainability,
supporting the wellbeing of the urban landscape as a whole.