A Systematic Research On Expressway Landscape

With the development of social economy in our country, expressway, as the main artery of our national economy, maintains a high-speed developing tendency. However, the construction of road landscape and environment is far from being satisfactory. Road, as the carrier of man and goods flowing, is a branch of architecture; while road landscape is a new discipline belonging to landscape aesthetics. Just like the architectural decoration, road landscape is a combination of art and techniques. It coordinates with the ecological environment through different spatial combination, linestyle, color etc.; these factors together create a harmonious expressway road landscape with the unity of function and form, purpose and means.The author mainly studies the secure information, aesthetic information, psychological information and communication information of the subject, "man", in the expressway environmental system. It takes the systematic theory as its basic guideline, and includes the disciplines of aesthetics, art design, systematics, architecture, gardening, communication, morphology, and psychology in the theoretical study of road landscape based upon landscape art design and relevant disciplines. During the thesis proposal, the author successively investigated the road landscape along the line of Wuhan airport expressway, Jingzhu expressway, Shanghai-Nanjing expressway, Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan expressway, etc. The author also took part in the design and construction of the landscape projects such as Jingzhu, Wuhuang, Hurong (Hubei section), Kaiyang, Yangmao, Jiepu in Guangdong.Integrating theory with practice, this thesis systematically analyzes and introduces the landscape design, construction and maintenance of median strip, slope, shelter belt, overpass, and service station; moreover, system analysis and benefit analysis are conducted based upon examples. This research aims at developing expressway landscape system to a wider and higher degree, attempts to overcome the deficiencies of traditional linear landscape design which lays particular stress on environment aesthetics, method and history, and intends to provide a comprehensive, multi-angled, interdisciplinary and systematic research approach. The ultimate goal is to explore a systematic theoretical basis, a feasible approach and some executive standards for domestic expressway landscapedesign.The author offers a few commonplace remarks here and hopes that others may come up with more valuable opinions. Discussions on the theory of expressway landscape system presents feasible bases for mapping out the best scheme of expressway landscape, so that optimum design combination and optimum design management can be achieved. In the meanwhile, the author hopes that the capability of the decision-maker, administrator and designer can be improved so as to break away from the present landscape model, and make the road landscape secure, comfortable, humanistic, and systematic.