Continuing The Historical Context:Study On The Transformation Of Xinkaihe Green Belt In Huanggu Shenyang

Waterfront, the city’s window, while also providing public open space, is an important place for public entertainment, recreation and socialization. At present, the phenomenon that more and more attention is focused onto the construction of urban waterfront has gone worldwide. However, as a developing country, China is less advanced in terms of material and spiritual levels of civilization, than those of developed Western countries. This leads to the naive pursuit of the so-called "modern style", ignoring the geographical and cultural background of the urban waterfront, as well as the simple imitation of the Western axis and geometric design, in the urban waterfront landscape design. These problems in the design contradict the modernization with the history and culture of the city.The historical context of a city is the trace of a city from its birth, added by the lifestyle it adopts. It is an important part of the traits, roots and souls of the city, which distinguishes from the others. Landscape Architecture carries the responsibility of continuing the historical context. Thus the design of urban space, should respect the city’s history, culture and geographical characteristics.This thesis, through a case study of Huanggu Xinkaihe Green Belt transformation, investigates how to design the urban waterfront combining the continuation the city’s historical context and innovation, with the purpose of continuing its history and culture. It is organized as the following. First of all, the waterfront history, theory and practical cases, as well as the concept and characteristics of historical context are discussed and summarized. Also, waterfront landscape design principles and methods for continuing historical context are carried out. Then, based on the theoretical studies, Huanggu Xinkaihe Green Belt is selected as the object of the study, through literature and field survey, the natural geography and history are studied as the historical context of the site. The natural geography of Shenyang is discussed; the current situation and issues of the site are analyzed. The history, heritage, legends, belief, festivals and traditional arts of Shenyang are synthesized. Finally, by following the design principles and methods, the design elements are refined from the historical context. These are later applied to the transformation of Huanggu Xinkaihe Green Belt, finalizing the design of the waterfront, which demonstrates the continuation of the historical context of the city. The transformation include:overall planning, river revetment, vegetation, road, identity systems, and finally, the theme sculpture.The contributions to the knowledge of this thesis are:(1) continuation of the historical context in the waterfront landscape design is studied, enriching the relevant theory.(2) in collaboration with practical example, a survey of the historical context of the Shenyang City and Xinkaihe Green Belt is done.(3) the design methods for continuing the historical context are applied to the transformation of Huanggu Xinkaihe Green Belt. This plays a positive role in solving the problem of lacking historical and cultural connotation in the existing urban waterfront landscape designs. Hopefully it could provide a reference for other cities’practical waterfront landscape designs in the future.