Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

I live and grew up in Lagga, a village in the countryside just outside Uppsala. Lagga is within the national interest for cultural environment preservation of the Storån and Sävjaån valleys. This work will examine the landscape analysis method SAVE- survey of architectural values in the environment as a method for landscape analysis in Lagga whose character is characterized by countryside and history. I think that the SAVE analysis in Lagga church village complements the proposal of the municipality and the villagers. There are some differences between all three proposals, but they can be good as a basis for discussion before, for example, a consultation with the villagers.
The main advantage of doing a SAVE analysis in Lagga church village was that at the same time as I arrived at similar placements to the municipality and the villagers, I also arrived at some design principles that are helpful in knowing how to concretely proceed to place new development in Lagga church village and at the same time preserve the existing character.
SAVE was also a systematic method. It took a lot of work before I understood how it would be implemented, but I think it complements both the villagers and the municipality's proposal in a good way.
The hope is that the result will be interesting and useful for planners and landscape architects in Sweden who want to develop buildings in cultural-historical environments in the countryside and think about which analysis method to use.
In order to capture the whole and the uniqueness of each landscape, you need to do a landscape analysis to see how the development can be developed in a sustainable way both socially, aesthetically, ecologically and economically.
It is important to analyze the landscape as a whole when doing a landscape analysis. A landscape analysis needs to deal with both cultural environment and natural environment aspects, visual aspects, capture the landscape at different scales and then be presented in an easy-to-understand manner.
There are many analysis methods to choose from. A landscape analysis can be used in three different stages depending on the purpose. Before a change takes place, a background analysis can be done to identify historical, ecological, natural and cultural geographical and visual values, often linked to the overall planning. Also so-called specific or targeted analyzes are made before a change and are used when a specific project's impact on the landscape is to be examined, for example the possible placement of wind turbines. You can also do a landscape analysis after a change, then you do a so-called impact analysis. In this work, I do a landscape analysis before a potential change.
In a landscape analysis, one needs to use a consistent typology when describing each characteristic area. A systematic way of working is needed in order for an individual or a small group of people to be able to capture the character of the landscape, and therefore landscape analyzes are needed.
A landscape analysis needs to be interdisciplinary. How we perceive the landscape is a product of our senses such as touch, sound, smell, sight, taste, our imagination and memories. Where people live and feel comfortable, belonging and identity are created, but different people perceive the landscape in different ways. The landscape needs to be a meeting place for objective, subjective, inside, outside, global, local, private and public perspectives. By doing a landscape analysis, we can try to capture the character of the landscape.
In an attempt to carry out broad landscape analyzes in Sweden, the Swedish Housing Agency has produced an equivalent to the Norwegian site analysis, the so-called local analysis. One of the visual analysis methods for analyzing the location that is part of a location analysis is the SAVE method.
The SAVE method is a further development of Kevin Lynch's method and can be said to be both a spatial and visual method because in addition to analyzing spatiality, SAVE focuses and values individual elements and the architecture and design language of buildings
The method was developed because they saw a problem with the fact that there were many buildings and environments of cultural and historical value, but they did not know how to capture the entire landscape picture and obtain a compilation of the historical values in the landscape.
The method is divided into two separate parts, mapping and evaluation of one or more building structures and registration and conservation evaluation of individual buildings. I only do the first part, mapping and valuation of one or more building structures. This part of the analysis focuses on capturing the whole and the distinctive expression of the building structure. This is done through a topographical, historical and architectural analysis as well as a compilation of dominant features, building patterns and elements in the building. The analysis concludes with an overall assessment and compilation of the supporting building structures and recommendations for further planning.
The core of the SAVE analysis is, regardless of which part of the method one chooses to carry out, that there is a collaboration between experts in cultural environment work and planners. For example between citizens, civil servants, politicians, landowners, museums and local associations such as homestead associations. To strengthen this collaboration, you can create a so-called follow-up group of these stakeholders who are present throughout the entire analysis. This collaboration creates a broad understanding of the municipality's cultural environment, which is also the purpose of the method.
In order to analyze the settlement structure in the countryside, one must have a broader perspective than just the settlement. You need to see overall environments such as villages, manor environments, industrial and station areas and their location in the landscape. In order to analyze the settlement structure in the countryside, one therefore needs to see the settlement in two scales, both a large scale to see the cohesion and location of the settlement in the landscape and a smaller scale to see individual settlement elements.
My result of the SAVE method shows that the most important parts to protect in the landscape around Lagga to maintain the current character are the Bronze Age landscape, the agricultural landscape with its village structure and the fragmented character.
The Bronze Age landscape here consists of islands of moraine hills in the open cultivated landscape, which provide long lines of sight and create a feeling of the ancient archipelago landscape. The meadows are important to preserve as they reinforce the feeling of a fragmented archipelago with beaches and bays that have been washed away by the water. Of course, the ancient remains from this time are also important to keep, such as burial mounds and Mora meadow. The Storån and the streams out in the fields that overflow in spring and winter also bear witness to the archipelago landscape and are an important element of the character.
The farming landscape, with its village structure, consists of small aggregated settlement groups up on the moraine hills that lie along the road and are embedded in greenery. The landscape is dominated by barns in clustered groups with some barns spilling out into the open cultivated landscape. Between each red-painted residential group is a section of forest and pasture that creates a rhythm of villages in the landscape.
The fragmented nature consists of a mosaic of smaller fields and pastures interweaving villages, farms and forest groves. This creates lobed borders against the large-scale cultivation plain. Here are some recommendations from the results. Avoid placing buildings high in the landscape. Buildings should be placed in grouped groups with a patch of greenery between the groups. Do not place new buildings on arable land but on the border between arable land and moraine hills. The building should be located along the village street and have large enough plots so that greenery can create a border to the street, there needs to be a zone of greenery in front of the building
The most difficult part of doing the SAVE analysis in the countryside has been analyzing settlement patterns as the settlement is much sparser in the countryside than in a city. In a city, you can more clearly divide the built-up area into different contiguous areas through residential areas that have been built during the same time. In Lagga, new houses have popped up at a slower pace and thus the same annual rings are not visible as in a city.
The SAVE method's division into dominant features, built-up patterns and built-up elements was a useful way to identify character-driving features in the landscape at different scales.
SAVE is a rather specialized analysis method. As it has a focus on history, topography and architecture in the method and then highlights the vulnerability and character of the landscape, it is an appropriate method to use the argument that the analysis method itself should not be interdisciplinary but that the evaluation of the analysis should be.
SAVE is a suitable method in the countryside because it focuses on history and it is in line with the National Antiquities' point of view that preserving the historical dimension of the landscape is an important part of rural welfare. The countryside has an important value even for city dwellers and we need to nurture what is unique in the rural landscape.
It is important to preserve the older cultural landscape. That's what the National Antiquities Authority thinks, and this is SAVE-good at doing.
The advantage is that the SAVE method is a broad analysis method that addresses topographical, natural, cultural-historical and spatial aspects of the landscape. However, the method does not address how the place is used today. Therefore, the method needs to be supplemented with an analysis of recreation and how people move in the landscape. However, the support group can be seen as a type of citizen dialogue and here the residents can point out important recreational areas or other places that are popular with the residents. The method also needs to be supplemented with a cultural environment analysis, which I have done to some extent in my research.